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Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


Iittp://www.arcliive.org/details/academicallectur01palfiala 


ACADEMICAL   LECTUBES 


JEWISH    SCRIPTURES 


AND 


ANTIQUITIES. 


By  JOHN  GORHAM  PALFREY,  D.  D., 

FROFEaSOR   OF   BIBUOAI.  LITEIUTURE   IK   THE   UMITERSITT   OF  CAMBBIDOE. 


VOL.    I. 

THE  LAST  FOUR  BOOKS  OF  THE  PENTATEUCH. 


Si  quia  igitar  percontari  velit,  verbis  liisco  Paulinis, T/;  ^  iucj>,sia,-  humillim^  re- 

ipondetur,  seqaontibus  Apostoli  verbis;  IIoXu,  xaTi  n-irra  Tp5:rov  ^pwroi'  juiv  yif,  oti  imvttd- 
d^<ruv  ri  ^oj-i'k  toS  fcisou.  Kenkicott,  Dissertotu)  Oeneraiis. 

So  Law  appears  imperfect ;  and  but  given 
With  purpose  to  resign  tbem,  in  full  time, 
Up  to  a  belter  covenant. 

Paradise  Lost,  xii.  300. 


BOSTON: 

JAMES    MUNROE    AND     COMPANy. 

NEW  YORK,  C.  S.  FRANCIS  ;    fUILADELPHIA,  JAMES  KAY,  JR.  AND  BROTHER  J 
P  BALTIMORE,  BAYLT  AND  BURNS;    WASHINGTON,  G.ANDERSON; 

0       CHARLESTON,  S.  C,  BDRGESS  AND  HONOUR. 

1838. 


^- 


Eiiiered  according  lo  Act  of  Congress,  in  ilie  year  1858, 

by  JOHH    GOBHAM    PAtf  RET, 

in  the  Clerk's  office  of  the  District  Court  for  the  District  of  Alassacbusetu. 


m 


CAMBRIDGE: 

FOLSOM,     WELLS,     AND     THURSTON, 

PRIKTERS  TO  THE   UNIVERSITY. 


1 


stack 
Annex 

1151 
P3 

V.I 


TO 

HENRY    WILLIAM    PALFREY, 

OF   NEW    ORLEANS, 
THIS   WORK    IS    AFFECTIONATELY   INSCRIBED 

BY 
HIS   BROTHER. 


^iS 


m 


f  * 


m 


PREFACE. 


I  LAY  before  the  public  some  of  the  results 
of  my  studies  upon  the  books  containing 
the  record  of  the  Divine  revelation  through 
Moses. 

On  some  accounts  I  could  certainly  have 
desired  to  keep  the  work  longer  by  me.  To 
say  nothing  of  a  literary  finish,  which  it  is 
not  likely  that  the  little  leisure  I  enjoy  would 
soon  have  afforded  me  opportunity  to  at- 
tempt, paths  of  inquiry  have  been  continually 
opening  before  me  as  I  proceeded,  which  I 
have  longed  to  follow,  and  which  I  have 
believed  would  lead  to  important  illustrations 
and  confirmations  of  views  presented  in  this 
volume. 

But  life  is  short,  and  art  is  very  long.  If 
some  years  should  be  yet  before  me,  I  do 
not  suppose,  that  they  would  be  most  profita- 
bly employed  in  following  out  separately  my 
own  trains  of  thought  and  investigation.  I 
would  rather  seek  the  advantage  of  compar- 
my  conclusions,  such  as  they  are,  with 

Ise    of  my  fellow-students  in   this    depart- 
ment ;  and  I  venture  to  hope,  that  the  present 


mf 


VUl  PREFACE. 


■m 


essay  may  be  not  without  utility  in  calling 
attention  to  some  prominent  questions,  and 
thus  finally  leading  to  clearer  and  more  sat- 
isfactory opinions  respecting  the  Jewish  sys- 
tem, than  are  commonly  entertained. 

Of  the  parts  of  this  discussion,  which  will 
be  thought  liable  to  objection,  it  is  likely,  that 
what  relate  to  the  Sabbath,  and  to  the  supply 
of  Manna  and  the  miraculous  guidance  of  a 
cloud  in  the  wilderness,  will  be  viewed  with 
as  little  favor  as  any  other.  I  request  those, 
who,  after  well  considering  the  substance  of 
the  third  Lecture,  still  think  that  I  have  used 
unreasonable  freedom  with  the  text  in  the 
former  of  these  instances,  to  suspend  their 
judgment,  till  we  have  advanced  to  the  ex- 
amination of  some  books  in  which  important 
facts  relating  to  the  history  of  the  text  are 
better  developed. 

The  question  upon  the  two  other  points, 
is  simply  one  of  safe  and  judicious  interpre- 
tation of  the  record.  The  reader  will  not 
need  to  be  reminded,  that  no  objection  is 
raised  to  the  common  opinion,  on  the  ground 
of  its  presumption  of  miraculous  agency. 
My  theory  of  miracles  is  extremely  simple. 
I  know  nothing  of  any  Laws  of  Nature, 
which  are  to  restrain  God.  What  we  call 
by  that  name,  are  merely  the  results,  stated 
in  general  terms,  of  our  own  observations 
on  the  actual  course  of  events.  Show  me 
an  occasion,  which  engages  the  Divine   be- 


PREFACE.  IX 

nevolence  to  make  a  direct  revelation  of 
truth,  and  immediately  (because  I  know  no 
other  way  to  authenticate  a  revelation)  mi- 
racles become  as  credible  to  me  as  other 
events,  and  as  capable  of  being  substantiated 
by  sufficient  human  testimony.  And  such 
an  occasion  I  recognise  to  have  existed, 
when,  the  world  being  overrun  with  per- 
nicious idolatries,  the  doctrine  of  one  God 
made  its  appearance  in  Judaism. 

If,  however,  it  belongs  to  a  miracle,  in- 
tended as  an  instrument  of  conviction,  to  be 
extraordinary,  —  that  is,  rare,  —  I  submit  it 
to  the  candid  judgment  of  others,  how,  to  the 
end  of  authenticating  the  revelation,  appear- 
ances like  those  in  question  can  be  satisfac- 
torily understood  to  have  been  permanently 
exhibited  through  forty  years,  so  as  to  be 
daily  witnessed  by  multitudes  from  infancy 
to  manhood.  In  examining  this  part  of  the 
record,  with  a  view  to  ascertain  how  much 
it  declares,  I  have  wished  to  express  myself 
modestly ;  and  I  freely  grant,  that  these  phe- 
nomena may  have  had  other  objects,  requiring 
their  permanency,  independent  of  that  virtue 
of  theirs  as  miraculous  evidence,  which  it 
would  seem  the  quality  of  permanency  must 
impair.  In  respect  to  the  provision  of 
Manna,  particularly,  it  may  have  been,  that 
while  the  better  sort  of  the  people  had  sup- 
pTres  of  their  own,  others  needed  to  be  fed 
by  a  continuous  supernatural  dispensation ; 
VOL.  I.  b  M 


■f 


X  PREFACE. 

and  it  may  have  been  necessary,  for  the  se- 
curity of  the  Tabernacle  from  roving  tribes, 
that  it  should  be  pitched,  for  the  most  part, 
in  barren  and  unfrequented  tracts,  where  its 
attendants  would  be  cut  off  from  the  com- 
mon sources  of  supply. 

The  little  space,  given  in  this  volume  to 
single  important  investigations,  will  be  ob- 
served to  be  a  necessary  incident  of  the 
extent  of  the  plan.  To  ask,  for  instance, 
why  I  have  not  treated  the  question  of  the 
Canon  more  at  large,  would  be  merely  to 
inquire  why  I  have  not  projected  a  different 
work. 

Such  consideration  as  the  system  of  Typ- 
ical Interpretation  appears  to  me  to  merit, 
I  reserve  for  the  third  of  the  volumes,  de- 
signed to  compose  this  series. 

My  common  use  of  the  word  Jews  for 
the  descendants  of  Jacob  might  be  made 
the  subject  of  a  punctilious  criticism.  But 
it  seemed  to  me,  that  to  study  to  avoid  it 
would  be  affectation  ;  and,  indeed,  at  the 
time  of  the  revolt  of  the  northern  tribes, 
the  word  Israelites,  which  might  be  thought 
entitled  to  a  preference,  became  equally  spe- 
cific in  its  sense,  as  the  name  of  only  part 
of  the  race. 

In  only  two  or  three  instances  have  I  been 
compelled  to  give  references  at  second  hand, 
for  want  of  access  to  the  original  authorities. 
In  these  cases,  taught  by  much  hard  experi- 


PREFACE.  Xi 

ence  how  unsafe  it  is  to  rely  upon  the  ex- 
actness of  quotations,  I  have  taken  care  to 
testify  to  nothing  more  than  the  representa- 
tion made  by  the  modern  scholar. 

For  the  typographical  execution  of  the 
volume,  I  am  under  great  obligations  to  the 
learned  and  faithful  conductors  of  the  Uni- 
versity Press.  Such  errata  as  I  have  ob- 
served, are  exhibited  in  a  table,  to  which 
I  request  the  reader's  attention.  After  a 
thorough  revisal,  Hebrew  types  are  so  liable 
to  injury  in  the  course  of  printing,  that,  where 
they  are  used,  errors  may  not  improbably  be 
found  in  some  copies,  which  do  not  appear 
upon  the  sheets  in  my  hand. 

Finally  ;  it  would  give  me  the  truest  satis- 
faction, if  I  might  learn,  that  views,  here  pre- 
sented, had  been  the  means,  in  any  instance, 
of  removing  scruples,  which  once  painfully 
exercised  my  own  mind. 

Divinity  College,  Cambridge,  Massachusetts ; 
December  30<A,  1837. 


% 


ERRATA. 

Pagt    6,  Unt  l&Jor  closest, 

read  closer. 

"     11, 

"  30,  "  -,0,^, 

"    IPP- 

"     25, 

"  28,  "  i^fJrai, 

"     i^dmii. 

"     38, 

'  32,  "  De  Vir.  Dlust. 

cap. 

24,  "    Catal.  Script  Eccles.,  1. 176  (Edit  Eras.) 

«     86, 

'  16,  "  repeals, 

"    repeats. 

"   108, 

'  26,  "  attracts. 

"    attract. 

"   128, 

"     3,  "  Moses, 

"    Aaron. 

"   191, 

'     9,  "  preferred. 

"    preserved. 

"  200, 

'    7,  "  corn-harvest, 

"    wfaeat-harvesU 

"   200,   ' 

'  21,  "  interdicted, 

"    enjoined. 

"   226, 

'    6,  "  hast  favor. 

"    hast  found  favor. 

"   310, 

'    3,  "  to  the. 

"    with  the. 

"   336, 

"  31,  "  t  The, 

"    t  Nnmb.  ix.  15-23.— The. 

"   340, 

"  »'  "  DP'Jfl'?' 

"  orr»V 

"    349, 

"  36,  "  was  probably. 

"    was  (compare  Numb,  zxviu.  6,  with  Ex. 
zziz.  40.) 

"   357, 

"  19,  "  n'3. 

"  nrj. 

> 


AL/e 


/m 


CONTENTS 


VOLUME    FIRST. 


LECTURE   I. 

LANGUAGE  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT. 

Page 
Introductory  Remarks.  —  Interest  and  Importance  of  the  Investiga- 
tion.—  Antiquity  of  the  Hebrew  Language.  —  Later  History. — 
Masoretic  Punctuation.  —  Sources  of  present  Knowledge  of  He- 
brew.—  Tradition  in  the  Jewish  Schools.  —  Old  Grammars  and 
Lexicons.  —  Versions. —  Cognate  Dialects.  —  Peculiar  Difficul- 
ties in  the  Interpretation  of  the  Hebrew  Writings.    ...      1 

LECTURE   II. 
CANON  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT. 

Current  Views  respecting  an  Old  Testament  Canon.  —  Its  Sup- 
posed Formation  by  Ezra,  and  the  Men  of  the  Great  Synagogue. 

—  Questions  respecting  the  Fact  of  such  a  Collection,  and 
Principles  observed  in  making  it  —  Extent  of  the  Collection 
rendered  in  the  Alexandrine  VersioiL  —  Books  mentioned  by 
Philo.  —  Evidence  from  the  New  Testament,  —  from  Josephus, 

—  from  Melito,  —  from  Origen,  —  from  Fathers  of  the  Fourth 
Century,  —  from  Jerome,  —  from  the  Talmud, —  Conclusion  from 

the  whole  Inquiry 20 

LECTURE   III. 
TEXT  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT. 

The  Text  of  the  Law  subject  to  be  vitiated  by  Copyists,  previously 
to  the  Separation  of  the  Kingdoms.  —  Information  respecting  its 


^  \ 


•^'     -.    ■.     -V*     .      ^v^ 


XIV  %  t  CONTENTS. 

early  Condition  to  be  derived  from  the  Samaritan  Pentateuch.  — 
Controversy  respecting  the  Origin  of  the  Samaritan  Copy. — 
History  of  the  Text,  to  the  Time  of  Ezra,  —  of  the  Alexandrine 
Version, — of  Origen, — of  the  Masorites,  —  of  the  Invention  of 
Printing.  —  Printed  Editions.  —  Impossibility  of  forming  a  whole 
Critical  Text  —  Recapitulation  of  principal  ante-Masoretic  Au- 
thorities  43 


LECTURE    IV. 
AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  PENTATEUCH. 

Nature  and  Amount  of  Proof  to  be  looked  for.  —  Statement  of  the 
Question.  —  Connexion  of  the  Miraculous  Relations  in  the  Pen- 
tateuch with  Later  History.  —  Difficulty  of  referring  it  to  any 
recent  Age.  —  Apparent  References  to  it  in  later  Books.  —  Ar- 
gument from  the  Number  of  Early  Textual  Corruptions.  —  Ob- 
jections to  its  Authenticity,  from  the  Supernatural  Character  of 
its  Narrative,  —  from  supposed  Immoralities,  and  Erroneous  Views 
of  the  Deity,  —  from  Passages  indicating  a  Later  Origin,  —  from 
the  supposed  Modern  Character  of  its  Style.  —  Favorable  Internal 
Evidence,  —  from  the  good  Influence  exerted  by  it, — from  single 
Texts,  —  from  its  Antiquated  Forms  of  Speech,  —  from  its  Jour- 
nal Character,  —  from  the  antique  Spirit  of  its  Laws,  —  from  its 
Anthropomorphitic  Representations  of  God,  —  from  the  Chasm 
in  its  Historical  Record,  —  from  the  Character  of  the  Relations 
in  the  Beginning  of  Genesis.  —  Conclusion  from  the  whole 
View. 67 


LECTURE    V. 

EXODUS    II.    11.  — VI.   30. 

Purpose  of  the  Mosaic  Revelation.  —  Objection  to  it,  from  the  Limi- 
tation of  its  Benefits.  —  Fitness  of  the  Publication  of  a  Pure 
Theology,  however  limited.  —  Discrimination,  a  Part  of  the  Uni- 
versal Law  of  Providence.  —  The  Mosaic  System  admitted  Prose- 
lytes, —  was  designed  for  the  Ultimate  Good  of  Mankind, — 
cannot  be  shown  to  have  been  the  only  Ancient  Revelation. — 
Objection  to  it  from  its  Rudeness  and  Imperfection.  —  Unreasona- 
bleness of  the  Expectation  that  whatever  proceeds  from  God  shall 
be  perfect.  —  The  Mosaic  System  was  accommodated  to  the 
Minds  which  it  was  to  address.  —  Difficulties  attending  its  inter- 
pretation. —  Remarks  on  various  Passages  connected  with  Moses' 
Assumption  of  his  Office 91 


CONTENTS.  XV 

LECTURE    VI. 
EXODUS  VII.   1.  — XII.  51. 

Purpose  of  the  Mosaic  Miracles  in  Egypt  —  Reason  of  the  Repe- 
tition of  such  Acts. — Explanation  of  Pharaoh's  Conduct. —  Char- 
acter of  the  Egyptian  Magicians,  and  of  their  Acts,  —  Amount 
and  Extent  of  the  Miraculous  Operation  recorded.  —  Observa- 
tions on  the  several  Plagues.  —  Institution  of  the  Passover.  — 
Exodus  from  Egypt.     .        .        .    , 110 

LECTURE    VII. 

EXODUS  XIII.    1.  — XVIII.  27. 

The  Jewish  Constitution  called  a  Theocracy.  —  Meaning  and  Ob-  v^s 
ject  of  the  Mosaic  Representation  of  God,  as  King  of  the  Jews. 

—  Preparation  for  a  National  Worship.  —  Incomplete  and  Pro- 
gressive Character  of  some  Provisions  of  the  Law.  —  Agency  of 
Moses  in  their  Arrangement.  —  Postponement  of  the  Invasion 
of  Canaan.  —  Nature  of  the  Pillar  of  Cloud  and  Flame.  —  Pas- 
sage of  the  Red  Sea.  —  Statute  given  at  Marah.  —  Miraculous 
Supplies  of  Quails,  of  Manna,  and  of  Water.  —  Battle  with  the 
Amalekites.  —  The  Law  given  on  Sinai  a  Code  of  Statute 
Law 141 

LECTURE    VIII. 
EXODUS    XIX.    1.  — XXIII.   33. 

Constitution  of  the  Hebrew  State,  before  and  under  the  Law.  —  The 
Israelites  an  Agricultural  People.  —  Confederation  of  the  Tribes. 

—  Jewish  Officers  in  Egypt  —  Magistracy  in  the  Wilderness. — 
Progressive  Character  of  the  Legislation,  connected  with  the 
Journal  Character  of  the  Record.  —  Secular  Character  of  some 
of  the  Laws.  —  Contents  of  the  Decalogue,  and  of  the  Rest  of 
the  Code  announced  upon  Mount  Sinai.  —  Incompleteness  of  the 
System.  —  Minute  and  rude  Character  of  some  Provisions.  — 
The  Manner  of  promulgating  the  Law,  suitable  to  give  it  Au- 
thority  162 


# 


• 


*>> 


XVI  CONTENTS. 

LECTURE    IX. 
EXODUS  XXIV.  1.— XXVn.  21. 

Engagement  of  the  People  to  accept  the  Law.  —  Manifestation  of 
the  Divine  Majesty  to  the  Jewish  Elders. —  Return  of  Moses  to 
Mount  Sinai.  —  Nature  of  the  required  Observance  of  a  weekly 
Sabbath.  —  Its  Design,  a  Commemoration  of  tlie  Emancipation 
from  Egypt.  —  Period  of  the  Institution.  —  Examination  of  Pas- 
sages understood  to  refer  it  to  the  Time  of  the  Creation. — 
Nature  and  Use  of  the  Three  Annual  Festivals. —  Rite  of  Cir- 
cumcision.—  Arrangements  for  a  Place  of  National  Worship.      .  183 

LECTURE   X. 
EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.— XL.  38. 

Institution  of  a  Priesthood. —  Habit  of  the  High  Priest.  —  Mitre. — 
Ephod.  —  Breast-Plate.  —  Urim  and  Thummim.  —  Robe.  —  Habit 
of  the  Inferior  Priests.  —  Ceremonies  of  Consecration. —  Further 
Directions  respecting  the  Tabernacle.  —  The  Law  given  on  Tab- 
lets of  Stone.  —  Offence  of  the  People  in  making  a  Golden  Calf 
—  Inference  from  tliis  Act,  respecting  their  Faith  in  Jehovah.  — 
Return  of  Moses  to  the  Camp.  —  Destruction  of  the  Idol,  and 
Punishment  of  the  Offenders,  i — Request  of  Moses  to  behold  a 
Vision  of  the  Deity. —  Radiance  of  Moses'  Face  on  coming  down 
from  the  Mountain.  —  Erection  of  the  Tabernacle,  and  Arrange- 
ment of  it  for  future  Religious  Services 210 

•  LECTURE   XI. 

LEVITICUS  L   1.  — IX.  24. 

Time  occupied  by  the  Events  recorded  in  Leviticus. — The  Worship 
^  of  the  Hebrews  consisted  of  Offerings.  —  Question  whether  the 
*  Worship  of  Offerings  was  originally  of  Human  or  Divine  Institu- 
tion. —  The  Mosaic  Code  found  the  Practice  existing.  —  Materials 
of  Offerings  prescribed  by  ,  the  Law —  Manner  of  presenting 
them,  and  Objects  designed  to  be  served.  —  Place  where  they 
must  be  presented,  and  Purpose  of  its  Designation. —  Revenues 
of  the  Priesthood.  —  Forms  of  Consecration  of  the  Priests. — 
Entrance  of  Aaron  on  his  Functions 235 


ru:Nlt.M"S.  XVll 

LECTURE    XII.  ^ 

LEVITICUS   X.    1.— XV.   33. 

Fate  of  Nadab  and  Abihu.  —  Jewish  Police  Laws.  —  Four  principal 
Objecta  contemplated  in  these  Provisions,  —  to  withhold  from 
Idolatrous  Practices,  —  to  preserve  the  general  Health,  —  to 
promote  Civilization,  —  to  make  Religious  Obligations  always 
present  to  the- Mind.  —  Prohibited  and  permitted  Kinds  of  Ani- 
mal Food.  —  Prohibitions  of  tlie  Use  of  Blood  and  of  Fat  — 
Cleanliness  in  respect  to  Vessels.  —  Uqcleanness  of  Persons. 

—  Precautions  against  Leprosy.  —  Leprosy  of  Garments  and 
Houses 259 

LECTURE   XIII. 

•  LEVITICUS  XVL  1.  — XXVn.  34. 

Day  of  Atonement  —  Scape-Goat  —  Repetition  of  some  previous 
Laws.  —  Rules  respecting  Alarriage.  —  Miscellaneous  Laws  hav- 
ing Reference  to  Idolatry,  —  and  enforcing  Humane  Dispositions. 

—  Specification  of  some  Penalties.  —  Rules  designed  to  excite 
Reverence  for  the  Sacerdotal  Office.  —  Repetition  of  Rules 
respecting  the  Sabbath,  tlie  Fast,  and  the  Festivals.  —  Care  of 
the  Candlestick,  and  of  the  Table  of  Shew-Bread.  —  Crime  and 
Fate  of  the  Son  of  Shelomith. —  Continuation  of  Legal  Penal- 
ties. —  The  Sabbatical  Year.  —  The  Year  of  Jubilee.  —  Ex- 
position of  tlic  Consequences  of  Obedience  and  Disobedience. 

—  Laws  respecting  Vows.  —  Institution  of  the  Payment  of 
Tithes 286 

LECTURE    XIV: 

NUMBERS  I    1.— X.  10 

Census  of  tlie  People.  —  Explanation  of  its  Correspondence  witii  tlie 
Enumeration  in  Exodus.  —  Arrangement  of  the  Tribes  in  the 
Camp.  —  Census  of  the  Tribe  of  Levi.  —  Arrangement  of  its 
Duties  at  tlie  Tabernacle.  —  Its  Position  in  the  Camp.  —  Con- 
tribution of  the  Supernumerary  First-Bom. — ^^  Duties  of  the  Le- 
vites  in  Later  Times.  —  Their  Revenues.  —  Propriety  of  the 
Selection  of  the  least  numerous  Tribe  for  Sacred  Offices. — 
Extension  and  Modification  of  some  previous  Laws.  —  Ordeal  of 
the  "  Law  of  Jealousies."  —  Rules  respecting  the  Vow  of  Naz- 

VOL.    I.  C  ^ 


XVm  CONTENTS. 

ariteship.  —  Benediction  prescribed  for  the  High  Priest's  Use. 
—  Donations  of  the  Princes  of  the  Tribes.  —  Arrangement  of 
the  Light  in  the  Holy  Place.  —  Consecration  of  the  Levites,  and 
new  Rule  for  their  Time  of  Service.  —  New  Direction  relating  to 
the  Passover.  —  Provision  of  the  Silver  Trumpets.        .        .        .311 


i;iECTURE    XV. 

NUMBERS  X.   11.  — XIX.  22. 

Decampment  from  "the  Wfldemess "of  Sinai."— Place  of  the  Le- 
vites, and  of  the  Ephraimites,  on  the  March.  —  Discontent  of  the 
People.  —  Commission  of  Seventy  Elders.  —  Miraculous  Supply 
of  Quails.  —  Mortality  at  Kibroth-Hattaavah.  —  Insubordination  of 
Aaron  and  Miriam,  and  Punishment  of  the  Latter.  —  Spies  sent 
to  .explore  Canaan. —  Discouragement  of  the  People  at  their 
Report.  —  Postponement  of  the  Invasion  for  forty  Years,  de- 
nounced.—  Battle  with  the  Amalekites,  and  Defeat  —  Rituafcof 
certain, Offerings.  —  Stoning  of  a  Sabbatli-Breaker.  —  Regulation 
for  a  uniform  Dress.  —  Rebellion  and  Punishment  of  Eorah,  Da- 
than,  Abrram,  and  On.  —  Miraculous  Testimony  to  Aaron's  Au- 
thority, by  the  Budding  of  his  Staff.  —  Arrangement  of  the 
Sacerdotal  and  Levitical  Revenues.  —  Ritual  of  the  "  Water  of 
Separation."  —  Question  respecting  the  Date  of  Occurrences 
related  in  the  Last  Five  Chapters.  —  Recapitulation  of  earlier 
Events. 338 


LECTURE    XVI. 
H  NUMBERS  XX.  1.— XXVII.  23. 

Return  'of  the  People  to  the  Southern  Border  of  Canaan.  —  Their 
Condition  during  the'^Jnterval  of  Thirty-Seven  Years.  —  Reasons 
of  the  Chasm  left  by  Moses  in  the  Record.  —  Scarcity,  and  Mi- 
raculous Supply,  of  Water.  —  Negotiation  with  the  Edomites  for 
a  Passage  through  their  Country.  —  Death  of  Aaron.  —  Skirmish 
with  the  Southern  Canaanites.  —  Circuit  by  the  Red  Sea. — 
Plague  of  "  Fiery  Serpents."  —  Negotiation  with  the  Amorites, 
and  Conquest  of  the  Territories  of  Sihon  and  Og.  —  Application 
of  Balak,  King  of  Moab,  to  Balaam,  and  his  Proceedings  there- 
upon. —  Disorders  and  Punishment  of  the  People  tft  Sliittim.  — 
Census,  and  Arrangement  for  the  Division  of  Canaan.  —  Rule 
for  the  Inheritance  of  Property  in  Land.  —  Promise  to  Moses 
of  a  Vision  of  Canaan,  and  Announcement  of  Joshua  as  his 
Successor 366 


CONTENTS.  XIX 

LECTURE    XVII. 
NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.  13. 

Directory  for  Offerings  on  the  Periodical  Celebrations.  —  Rules  re- 
specting the  Obligation  of  Vows.  —  Occasion  and  Prosecution  of 
the  War  with  the  Midianites,  —  Consideration  of  the  Severities 
exercised  therein. —  Laws  respecting  tlie  Division  of  Booty  taken 
in  War.  —  Establishment  of  the  Reubenites,  ;the  Gadites,  and 
half  of  the  Tribe  of  Manasseh,  in  the  District  east  of  the  Jordan. 

—  List  of  the  Marches  from  Egypt  to  Canaan. — Command  to 
expel  the  Canaanites.  —  Definition  of  the  Boundaries  of  Pales- 
tine. —  Appointment  of  Princes  to  make  a  Partition  of  the  Terri- 
tory.—  Direction  for  Levitical  Cities,  and  Cities  of  Refuge. — 
Institution  of  Goelism.  —  Treatment  of  justifiable  Homicide.—^ 
Rule  to  prevent  the  Tranrfer  of  Land  by  Heiresses  to  another 
Tribe .    "    .        .        .394 

LECTURE    XVIII. 
DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.  — XI.  31. 

Occasion  and  Design  of  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy.  —  Its  Authen- 
ticity.—  Its  Chronology.  —  Moses  recapitulates  some  Events  of 
the  First  Two  Years  after  the  Exodus,  —  and  some  Events  of  the 
Fortieth  Year.  —  He  exhorts  the  People  to  obey  their  Law,  — 
and  especially  to  abstain  from  Idolatry.  —  He  selects  the  three 
eastern  "Cities  of  Refuge." — Recites  the  Circumstances  of  the 
Delivery  of  the  Law  at  Sinai.  —  Urges  the  Duty  of  a  solicitous 
Observance  of  it,  and  of  instructing  the  Young  in  its  Principles. 

—  Interdicts  Intercourse  with  the  Idolatrous  Canaanites,  and  com- 
mands their  Expulsion.  —  Recounts  Instances  of  God's  Favor,  — 
and  of  the  People's  Unfaithfulness.  —  Exhibits  the  Consequences 
of  Future  Obedience  and  Disobedience.  —  Refers  to  a  Future 
Act  of  National  Self-Consecration 424 

LECTURE    XIX. 

DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19. 

Moses  recites  and  announces  Laws,  —  relating  to  Idolatry,  —  to 
Worship,  —  to  the  Religious  Revenues,  —  to  Distinctions  of 
Food, — to  the  Festivals,  —  to  the  Second  Tithe  and  Firstlings, 

—  to  the  Sabbatical  Year, —  to  Slavery,  —  to  a  Future  Monarchi- 


XX  CONTENTS. 

cal  Government,  —  to  False  Teachers,  with  a  Prediction  of  the 
Great  Teacher  to  come,  —  to  Rights  of  Citizenship,  —  to  the 
Customs  of  War,  —  to  Domestic  Relations, — to  Usury, — to 
Offices  of  Justice,  Humanity,  Courtesy,  and  Compassion,  —  to 
Miscellaneous  Subjects,  —  to  Crimes,"  Processes,  and  Punish- 
ments.—  He  gives  Directions  respecting  Offerings  to  be  made 
after  the  orderly  Settlement  of  the  Country, —  and  renews  his 
Elxhortations  to  Obedience,  and  Assurances  of  the  Divine  Favor.    448 


LECTURE    XX. 
DEUTERONOMY  XXVU.  1.  — XXXIV.   12. 

Moses  commands  the  Elrection  of  an  Altar  on  the  West  Side  of  Jor- 
dan,— the  Inscription  thereupon  of  Imprecations  to  be  uttered  by 
the  Levites,  and  assented  to  by  the  People, —  and  a  Proclamation, 
by  all  the  Tribes,  of  future  Prosperity  or  Ruin,  according  as  his 
Law  should  be  observed  or  violated.  —  He  reverts  to  past  "IH^ns 
of  the  Divine  Goodness,  and  again  exhibits  the  necessary  Con- 
sequences of  future  Obedience  and  Defection.  —  He  gives  a 
public  Charge  to  Joshua,  —  delivers  the  Book  of  the  Law  to  the 
Levites,  with  the  Command  to  read  it  publicly  every  seventh 
Year,  —  and  accompanies  Joshua  to  receive  a  Divine  Communica- 
tion at  the  Tabernacle.  —  The  Book  closes  with  the  Records  of 
his  Direction  concerning  the  Place  of  Deposit  of  the  Law,  —  of 
an  Ode,  represented  to  be  uttered  by  him  in  the  Presence  of  the 
Congregation, —  of  his  La^t  Benediction  of  the  Tribes,  —  and 
of  his  Death  and  Burial.  —  Remarks  on  tlie  Absence  from  the 
Law,  of  any  Sanction  derived  from  a  Future  Life.        .        ,        .  489 


LECTURES 


JEWISH  SCRIPTURES  AND  ANTIQUITIES. 


LECTURE    I. 

LANGUAGE  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT. 

iNTRODudlRiT  Remarks. —  Interest  and  Importance  of  the  In- 
vestigation.—  Antiquity  of  the  Hebrew  Language. —  Later 
History.  —  Masoretic  Punctuation.  —  Sources  of  present 
Knowledge  of  Hebrew. —  Tradition  in  the  Jewish  Schools. 
—  Old  Grammars  and  Lexicons. —  Versions.  —  Cognate  Dia- 
lects.—  Peculiar  Difficulties  in  the  Interpretation  of  the 
Hebrew  Writings. 

The  subjects  which  are  to  come  before  us,  in  a 
survey  of  the  Jewish  Scriptures  and  Antiquities,  have 
strong  claims  on  the  attention  of  a  Christian.  If  the 
received  opinion  in  the  Christian  church  be  well 
founded,  the  Jewish  books  contain  the  record  of  a 
supernatural  revelation  from  God.  And  the  interest 
of  such  a  revelation  can  never  cease,  through  the  cir- 
cumstance of  its  being  superseded  by  more  ample 
disclosures  of  truth  in  another  system.  Still  it  re- 
mains important  and  memorable,  as  making  part  of 
the  history  of  the  divine  administration  for  man's  spir- 
itual benefit.  Still,  what  it  comprehends  is  truth,  which 
God  held  to  be  of  moment  enough  to  justify  the  resort 
to  extraordinary  means  in  its  communication ;  and  truth 

VOL.    I.  1 


2  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  [LECT. 

therefore,  which  even  in  its  earlier  and  less  complete 
forms  of  exhibition,  Christians  cannot  but  desire  to  in- 
vestigate. 

The  study  of  the  Old  Testament  scriptures  has  im- 
portant direct  relations  to  that  of  the  documents  of  the 
Gospel  dispensation.  Not  only  were  the  forms  of  ex- 
pression of  the  evangelical  writers  affected  by  those 
of  the  ancient  language  of  the  race  to  which  all  of 
them  belonged,  to  the  degree  that  an  interpreter,  who 
should  omit  this  circumstance  from  his  consideration, 
would  often  be  without  a  clue  to  their  sense ;  but 
their  habits  of  thought  had  been  formed  under  influ- 
ences, to  which  the  institutions  and  the  faith,  prescribed 
and  expounded  in  these  scriptures,  contribu^  a  ma- 
terial part.  They  make  constant  reference  to  their 
national  history ;  and  to  a  reader  unacquainted  with  it 
their  illustrations  must  needs  fail  of  the  intended  use. 
They  refer  to  practices  and  opinions,  respecting  which 
their  ancient  scriptures  afford  the  needed  information. 
They  exhibit  Christian  truth,  as  it  had  impressed  itself 
on  Jewish  minds ;  and,  without  knowing  something  of 
the  formation  of  such  minds  through  the  action  of  cur* 
rent  sentiment  and  surrounding  society,  we  shall  be 
liable  to  lose  more  or  less  of  the  spirit  and  scope  of 
their  representation.  They  were  much  employed  in 
themselves  controverting,  and  in  showing  how  their 
Lord  opposed,  Jewish  errors.  To  enter  into  the  spirit 
of  such  arguments,  we  need  some  information  respect- 
ing the  origin,  the  nature,  and  the  bearings  of  the 
prejudices  they  were  designed  to  expose.  They  imply, 
—  at  all  events,  they  seem  to  imply,  —  a  connexion 
between  the  Mosaic  and  the  Christian  systems.  The 
character  and  the  extent  of  this   connexion  make  a 


I.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  3 

problem  for  whoever  would  arrive  at  entirely  satisfac- 
tory views  of  the  latter. 

In  our  times,  the  settling  of  the  right  interpretation 
of  the  Old  Testament  has  become  an  object  of  peculiar 
importance.  It  cannot  have  failed  to  be  observed  by 
persons  in  any  degree  conversant  with  recent  infidel 
writings,  that,  in  far  the  greater  part,  their  arguments 
designed  to  discredit  Christianity  are  drawn  from  views 
received  by  Christians  concerning  Judaism.  With  Chris- 
tianity they  identify  prevailing  conceptions  respecting 
the  Jewish  system  and  history,  in  a  way  for  which 
it  may  be  that  Christian  scholars  have  afforded  them 
but  too  fair  a  pretext;  and,  this  done,  whatever  they 
find  vulnerable  in  these  latter,  they  make  to  appear 
as  a  wTOv  point  in  the  Christian  scheme.  I  appre- 
hend, that  a  just  exposition  of  the  Mosaic  institution, 
and  of  its  relation  to  that  of  Jesus,  would  disarm  infi- 
delity of  its  most  formidable  weapons.  I  suppose  that 
Christians  have  generally  taken  a  ground  on  this  sub- 
ject, which  they  cannot  justify  for  themselves,  and 
which  they  cannot  maintain  against  their  opponents. 
But,  however  this  may  be,  every  one  acquainted  with 
the  state  of  the  controversy  between  the  apologists 
and  the  assailants  of  our  faith,  sees  cause  to  admit 
the  extreme  importance  of  having  well-defined  and 
defensible  opinions  respecting  the  degree  of  its  respon- 
sibleness  for  the  character  of  the  dispensation,  which 
introduced,  or,  at  least,  preceded  it,  as  well  as  respect- 
ing the  essential  claims  of  that  dispensation,  its  prm- 
ciples,  and  purport. 

The  writings,  which  thus  come  under  our  notice, 
are  mostly  composed  in  the  Hebrew  language.  This 
name,  by  which  it  is   commonly  known,  is   however 


4  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  [LECT. 

never  applied  to  it  in  the  Old  Testament.*    In  a  few 
texts  it  is  called  "the  Jews'  language."! 

By  Jewish  and  Christian  writers,  it  has  been  often 
maintained  to  be  the  original  language  of  man.  But 
besides  that,  for  want  of  evidence,  reaching  so  far  back, 
that  proposition  is  incapable  of  being  proved,  it  seems 
to  be  based  upon  an  unquestionable  error.  Language 
is  from  its  nature  fluctuating.  It  adapts  itself,  step  by- 
step,  to  the  altering  wants,  fashions,  and  intellectual 
conditions  of  men.  Nothing  can  absolutely  arrest  its 
essential  tendency  to  change.  What  comes  the  nearest 
to  such  a  check,  is  the  currency  of  some  great  national 
work,  holding  such  a  place  in  the  respect  of  a  people, 
as  to  become,  both  avowedly  and  insensibl^^a  stand- 
ard of  speech.  Such  was  partially  the  effSrof  the 
version  of  the  scriptures  by  Luther,  and  of  that  of 
King  James's  translators,  upon  their  respective  lan- 
guages ;  and  such  appears  to  have  been  that  of  the 
writings  of  Moses  themselves.  But  these  compositions, 
according  to  the  commonly  received  chronology,  were 
not  produced  till  language  had  been  used  for  two 
thousand  five  hundred  years  ;  nor  is  there  reason  to 
suppose  that  they  had  been  preceded  by  any  thing, 

•  Nor,  probably,  in  the  New.  One  cannot  positively  affirm,  whether,  for 
example,  in  Luke  xxiii.  38,  and  Acts  xxvi.  14,  the  ancient  language  of  the 
race  was  meant,  or  the  then  vernacular  tongue,  commonly  called  the 
Syro-Chaldee.  The  latter,  no  doubt,  was  intended  in  John  v.  2,  and  Acts 
xxi.  40.  The  name  Hebrew  is  very  fitly  applied  to  the  ancient  language, 
being  the  designation  of  the  race  which  employed  it,  in  Gen.  xiv.  13,  and 
numerous  other  places  of  the  Old  Testament  Its  derivation  is  unsettled; 
some  referring  its  origin  to  Eber  (Gen.  x.  21 ;  1  Chron.  i.  19.),  an  obscure 
ancestor  of  Abraham  ;  others  understanding  it  to  come  from  the  root  ^^:2J? 
"  he  passed  over,"  and  to  have  reference  to  Abraham's  immigration  from 
Chaldea  into  Canaan,  over  the  Euphrates.  And  tJiis  etymology  is  con- 
firmed by  the  Septuagint    'Ae^aa/n  r^  rtfarif.  (Gen.  xiv.  13.) 

t  2  Kings  xviii.  28 ;  Isa.  xxxvi.  11 ;  Neb.  xiii.  24 ;  2  Chron.  xxxii.  18. 
The  form,  in  the  Hebrew,  is  adverbial ;  but  our  version  is  unexceptionable. 


I.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  5 

suited  to  exert  an  influence  of  the  sort  in  question. 
By  Moses,  (supposing  him  for  the  present  to  be  the 
author  of  the  books  which  go  by  his  name,)  the  lan- 
guage of  his  nation  was  in  a  degree  fixed.  Down  to 
his  time,  I  see  no  room  for  doubting,  that  it  had  been 
exposed  to  all  the  occasions  of  incessant  change.  It 
was  a  branch,  derived  by  remote  descent  from  the 
language,  first  gpoken  by  man.  But  to  identify  it  with 
that  speech,  is  not  only  to  proceed  altogether  without 
proof;  it  is,  further,  to  deny  the  existence  of  causes, 
which  could  not  have  failed  to  operate. 

It  is  probable,  that  at  the  time  of  Abraham's  removal 
from  Chaldea  into  Canaan,  the  Hebrew  language,  or  at 
least  a  Janguage  so  closely  resembling  it  as  to  be 
merelyWfother  dialect  from  the  same  stock,  was  so 
widely  in  use  as  to  include  the  native  country  of  that 
patriarch.  He  appears  to  have  conversed  without  difll- 
culty  from  the  first  with  the  people  of  Palestine;* 
his  grandson,  Jacob,  seems  to  have  enjoyed  an  equal 
facility  of  intercourse  with  the  inhabitants  of  Mesopo- 
tamia, when  he  journeyed  into  that  district ;  f  and  the 
names  of  Laban's  family  are  of  Hebrew  construction. 
But,  whether  employed  by  Abraham  before  or  only 
after  his  arrival  in  Canaan,  Hebrew  was  the  vernacular 
speech  of  that  country.  Isaiah's  words  are  peculiar, 
where  he  calls  it  "  the  language  of  Canaan,"  J  in  an 
age  when  the  Jewish  territory  was  no  longer  known 
by  that  name.  Proper  names,  which  Abraham  found 
in  use   among  the  Canaanites,  are   strictly  Hebrew.  || 

*  Gen.  xiv.  18-24;  xx.  9-15;  xxiii.  3-16. 

f  Gen.  xxix.  4  et  seq.  J  Isaiah  xix.  18. 

II  For  instance  ;  13D"r\^'^p,  Kirjathsepher,  city  of  the  hook ;  (comp. 
Judges  i.  11);  iSp'ns,  Abimelech, /aMer  q/" /Ae  king;  p"iJf'3So,  Melchi- 
zedek,  king  of  righteousness. 


6  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  [LECT. 

Carthage  was  a  colony  of  the  Phcenicians,  who  inhab- 
ited the  Canaanitish  sea-coast;  and  we  have  the  au- 
thority of  Jerome  and  Augustine  to  the  point,  that  the 
Hebrew  and  the  Punic  or  Carthaginian  languages  had 
the  closest  affinity.*  Livy  says,  that  the  Cartha- 
ginians called  their  consuls  Suffetes,f  a  well-known 
Hebrew  word  (Q^D^b^),  and  the  same  by  which  the 
Israelitish  champions  are  denominated  in  the  Book  of 
Judges.  And  a  curious  corroboration  of  the  same  fact 
occurs  in  the  deciphering,  by  Bochart,  of  some  lines 
put  into  the  mouth  of  a  Carthaginian,  in  a  play  of 
Plautus.t 

From  the  time  of  Moses  to  that  of  David,  it  cannot 
be  perceived  that  the  language  of  the  Jews^^stained 
any  very  material  changes.  With  the  exteiSRl  com- 
merce of  Solomon,  and  particularly  after  the  closest 
relations  between  Judea  and  the  East,  existing  from  the 
time  of  Ahab,  and  still  more  after  that  of  Hezekiah,  we 

*  "Punicse  linguse, in  qua  miilta  invenimus  Hebrseis  verbis 

consonantia."  Augustin.  de  Gen.,  lib.  1.  —  "Hebrsei  dicunt  Messiam, 
quod  verbum  Punicse  linguse  consonum  est,  sicut  alia  permulta  Hebraicct, 
d  pene  omnia.''''  Idem,  Contra  Literas  Petiliani,  lib.  2,  cap.  104. — "Poeni, 
sermone  corrupto,  quasi  PhcEni,  appellantur  [Carthaginienses,]  quorum 
lingua  linguse  Hebrseae  magna  ex  parte  confinis  est."  Hieronymi  Com- 
ment, in  Jer.,  lib.  5,  cap.  25.  —  For  some  further  authorities  to  this  point, 
see  Walton's  Prolegomena,  3,  §  16.  It  is  elaborately  treated  in  the 
second  book  of  Bochart's  Canaan. 

f  "  SufFetes,  quod  velut  consulate  imperium  apud  eos  erat"  Lib.  30, 
cap.  7. 

\  Bocharti  Canaan,  lib.  2,  cap.  6.  The  play  in  which  the  passage 
occurs  is  the  Poenulus.  Hanno,  the  Carthaginian,  is  introduced  (Act  V. 
Scene  1.)  as  uttering  a  soliloquy,  the  first  sixteen  lines  of  which,  though 
expressed  in  Latin  letters,  are  not  Latin,  and,  by  the  mistakes  of  copyists 
not  acquainted  with  the  language,  have  been  reduced  to  mere  gibberish. 
Bochart  has  restored  the  original  reading  of  the  first  ten  lines,  (the 
next  six  he  understands  to  be  not  Punic,  but  Lybian,)  and  shows,  so  far, 
the  similarity  between  the  Punic  and  the  Hebrew.  The  proof  that  his 
conjectures  in  the  way  of  emendation  are  correct,  is  found  in  this ;  that 
the  lines,  so  amended,  no  otherwise  differ  from  the  sense  of  the  eleven 


I.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  7 

find  a  sensible  adulteration  of  the  purity  of  the  tongue. 
When  in  the  Babylonish  conquest  the  national  inde- 
pendence was  overthrown,  the  prevailing  opinion  has 
been,  that,  during  the  exile,  the  national  speech  was 
lost;  and  that  the  families  who  returned  brought  with 
them  only  the  Chaldee.  But  this  can  by  no  means 
be  safely  inferred  from  such  a  text  as  that  in  the  eighth 
chapter,  eighth  verse,  of  Nehemiah ;  it  is  not,  in  itself, 
a  probable  thing,  so  short  was  the  term  of  absence ; 
and  Malachi,  who  of  course  must  have  desired  to  be 
understood  by  those  whom  he  reproved,  and  who 
reproved  people  as  well  as  priests,  wrote  in  He- 
brew  more  than  a  hundred  years  later.     The  strong 

Latin  linaPwhich  follow,  than  as  a  free  translation  differs  from  its  ori- 
ginal.   I  give  the  first  three  lines  for  a  specimen. 

Reading  of  the  editions. 
Nythalonim  uvalonuth  si  corathisima  consith 
Chim  lach  chunyth  mumys  tyalmictibari  mischi 
Lipho  canet  hyth  bynitliii  ad  sedin  binuthiL 

BocharVs  restoration. 
Na  eth  elionim  veelionoth  sechorath  yismecun  zoth 
Chi  melachai  nitthemu ;  matslia  middabarehem  iski. 
Liphurcanath  eth  beni  eth  jad  adi  ubenothai. 

Hebreto-Syriac  expressed  by  the  latter. 

nit  iooq:  nni'2-^  ni'jrSi'i  t3"'3r'?;j.  njj  kj 

The  same  literally  rendered  into  Latin. 
Rogo  Deos  et  Deas  qui  banc  regionem  tuentur, 
Ut  consilia  mea  compleantur,  prosperum  sit  ex  ductu  eorum  negotium 

meum. 
Ad  liberationem  filii  mei  a  manu  prffidonis,  et  filiarum  mearum. 

Corresponding  Latin  lines  in  Plautus. 
**  Deos  deasque  veneror,  qui  banc  urbem  colunt, 
Ut,  quod  de  mea  re  hue  veni,  rite  venerim; 
Measque  ut  gnatas,  et  mei  fratris  filium, 
Reperire  me  siritis." 


8  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  [LECT. 

probability  I  conceive  to  be,  that  the  returning  exiles 
brought  back  both  their  own  ancient  language,  and 
that  of  their  conquerors  among  whom  they  had  been 
sojourning ;  and  that  it  was  only  by  degrees,  that  the 
latter  supplanted  the  former,  both  continuing  for  a  time 
in  use  together,  in  a  way  of  which  examples  exist 
in  portions  of  this  country,  inhabited  by  other  than 
Enghsh  descendants.  And  I  apprehend  that  the  same 
is  to  be  said  concerning  the  introduction  of  the  square 
Chaldee  characters,  in  the  writing  of  Hebrew,  instead 
of  the  ancient  letter ;  —  that  is,  if  the  opinion  be  true, 
generally  held  by  the  learned,  but  which  it  is  not  to 
my  purpose  to  discuss,  that  what  we  now  call  the 
Samaritan  alphabet,  from  its  being  used  in  t^Samari- 
tan  writings,  and  in  the  Samaritan  copy  of  tn^Iebrew 
Pentateuch,  was,  before  the  captivity,  the  alphabet  of 
the  Jews. 

After  the  Hebrew  ceased  to  be  a  spoken  language, 
surviving  only  as  the  language  of  the  Jewish  schools, 
it  became  greatly  corrupted  by  mixture  with  the 
Chaldee  and  Syriac,  and  by  a  large  infusion  of  words 
from  the  Greek,  the  Latin,  and  other  sources.  In  this 
state,  exhibited  to  us  in  the  ancient  collections  called 
the  Talmuds,  it  goes  by  the  name  of  the  Talmudical 
dialect.  The  same  process,  continued  further  in  later 
ages,  through  contributions  from  various  modem  tongues, 
has  produced  a  language,  used  by  the  recent  Jewish 
writers,  and  called,  from  this  cause,  the  Rabbinical. 
In  a  loose  way  of  description,  it  might  be  said  to  bear  a 
relation  to  the  Hebrew,  like  that  which  the  Romaic  bears 
to  the  Greek,  or  the  Italian  to  the  Latin.  Though 
called  by  one  name,  and  having  everywhere  an  essen- 
tial uniformity,  yet,  as  might  be  expected  from  the 
manner  of  its  creation,  it  exhibits  varieties,  as  employed 
in  different  parts  of  the  world,  even  at  the  same  period. 


I.]  OLD   TESTAMENT.  ^ 

A  question,  once  agitated  with  great  warmth,  is, 
whether  the  vowel  points,  as  we  now  have  them  from 
the  Jews,  made  part  of'  the  original  written  language. 
The  question  is  evidently  of  material  importance;  since, 
if  the  vowels  were  not  affixed  by  the  authors,  but  were 
the  addition  of  a  much  later  age,  they  are  of  no  further 
authority,  than  as  they  express  the  sense  put  upon 
words  by  persons  skilled  in  the  language,  and  in  pos- 
session of  a  traditional  interpretation.  And,  in  this  case, 
they  may  now  be  rejected  by  a  critic,  as  reasons  of 
interpretation  may  dictate,  and  others  be  substituted  in 
their  place,  attaching  a  different  meaning  to  words.* 

By  the  Buxtorfs,  father  and  son,  and  their  successors, 
champi^  of  the  antiquity  of  the  vowel  punctuation, 
it  was  OTged,  that  vowels,  as  much  as  consonants,  are 
essential  parts  of  words;  that  to  omit  the  writing  of 
them  would  be  to  make  written  language  ambiguous 
and  unintelligible;  that,  particularly  after  the  Hebrew 
ceased  to  be  a  spoken  language,  it  could  not  have  been 
learned  in  books,  not  expressing  the  vowel  sounds ;  and 
that,  in  fact,  in  the  Jewish  books  "Bahir"  and  "Zohar," 
written  both  about  the  time  of  our  Saviour,  the  vowel 
pomts  are  made  the  subject  of  express  and  frequent 
comment.  On  the  other  hand,  by  Capellus  and  others, 
it  was  maintained,  1.  that  the  letters  called  the  matres 
lectionis,  viz.  K,  H,  \  \  V,  were  the  vowels  of  the 
Hebrew,  —  a  theory,  however,  which  can  by  no  means 
be  made  out,  and  which  has  since  been  modified  or 
relinquished;  2.  that,  for  readers  well  acquainted  with 
a  language,  writing  which   presented  only  the  conso- 

*  It  is  the  vowel  punctuation  alone,  which  marks,  for  instance,  the 
difference  of  signification  between  the  following  words ;  ^21,  a  word ; 
1.3^,  a  pestilence;  151,  a  pasture',  '\y^,  he  spoke;  131,  »peaAin£^;  1:31,^ 
spoken ;  SsT,  to  speak ;  and  six  other  forms  of  the  verb,  each  with  ita 
appropriate  meaning. 

VOL.    I.  2 


10  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  (LECT. 

nants  might  be  sufficient,  the  connexion  of  the  passage 
naturally  dictating  to  them  the  sense  to  be  put  upon 
words,  and  of  course  the  vowels  to  be  supplied  in 
their  pronunciation  ;*  3.  that  the  supposition  of  points, 
as  making  part  of  the  original  written  Hebrew,  con- 
tradicts the  analogy  of  the  cognate  languages,  and  of 
the  Samaritan  copy  of  the  Hebrew  Pentateuch  ;  4. 
that  the  manuscripts  of  scripture,  used  in  the  syna- 
gogues, are  to  this  day  destitute  of  a  punctuation-; 
5.  that,  in  Jewish  observations  upon  various  readings, 
we  find  none  relating  to  the  vowel  points,  though  these 
could  not  have  failed  to  be  a  copious  source  of  such, 
had  they  been  originally  written;  6.  that  the  Cabba- 
lists  never  deduce  their  mysteries  and  allegories  from 
the  points,  but  always  from  the  consonant?  alone  ; 
7.  that  the  authors  of  ancient  versions  certainly  read 
the  text,  in  numerous  instances,  in  a  manner  different 
from  what  is  indicated  by  the  present  points  ;  8.  that 
no  hint  of  their  existence  is  given  by  the  early  Chris- 
tian critics,  (Origen  and  Jerome,  for  example,)  though 
the  latter  often  speaks  of  Hebrew  words  being  dif- 
ferently pronounced  by  different  readers ;  and,  9.  that  the 
books  "Bahir"  and  "Zohar,"  instead  of  being  contem- 
porary with  our  Saviour,  are  not  a  thousand  yeai's  old ; 
a  pomt  which  seems  to  be  well  established  from  inter- 
nal evidence,  and  from  the  fact  that  they  are  never 
quoted  by  other  writers,  till  a  time  far  within  this 
period. 

*  This  is  confinned  by  the  actual  practice  of  persons  acquainted  with 
Hebrew,  when  they  read  from  an  unpointed  copy,  and  by  every  instance 
we  may  have  known  of  reading,  in  any  language,  from  a  page  full  of 
abbreviations.  Indeed,  the  system  of  vowel  notation  is,  in  no  language, 
any  thing  more  than  a  partial  relief  from  the  embarrassment  supposed  ; 
our  five  English  vowel  characters,  for  instance,  standing  for  no  less, 
according  to  Walker's  theory,  than  fifteen  sounds,  an  enumeration  which 
many  would  esteem  altogether  incomplete. 


I.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  H 

These  reasons,  and  others  like,  have  led  to  a  gen- 
eral acquiescence  of  the  learned,  in  the  opinion,  that 
the  vowel  punctuation,  as  we  have  it  in  our  Hebrew, 
was  elaborated  in  the  Jewish  schools,  at  some  time 
between  the  fifth  and  tenth  centuries  of  our  era.  It 
was  probably  not  an  invention  completed  at  once,  but 
grew  up,  by  degrees,  from  a  simple  notation  to  its  pres- 
ent complexity  and  fulness.  And  this  conclusion  leaves 
the  critic  at  liberty  to  propose  expositions  of  a  sentence, 
such  as  the  present  punctuation  would  not  admit.  It 
is  a  liberty,  however,  which  he  should  not  so  use,  as 
if  no  respect,  or  little,  was  due  to  that  reading  of  the 
Hebrew,  which  the  points  preserve.  Whether  or  not 
the  elements  of  the  apparatus  were  drawn  from  a  re- 
mote antiquity,  which  used  a  smaller  number  of  points, 
and  those  perhaps  only  affixed  at  first  to  the  more 
equivocal  words  (as  is  seen  in  some  Arabic  printing), 
it  seems  impossible  to  doubt  that  the  Masoretic  *  in- 
vention perpetuates  for  us  the  reading,  which,  at  the 
time  of  the  invention,  was  received,  by  force  of  ancient 
tradition  from  the  fathers,  among  the  people  by  whom 
the  writings  were  preserved,  venerated,  and  studied. 
As  such,  they  are,  in  the  lowest  estimate,  an  exceed- 
ingly valuable  ancient  commentary.  They  seem  to  be 
entitled  even  to  be  regarded  as  prima  facie  evidence 
how  a  passage  should  be  read,  though  reason  may 
often  appear,  in  a  given  case,  for  setting  their  evidence 
aside.f 

Learners  of  the  Hebrew  language  are  very  properly 

*  Masora  means  tradition,  from  IDX,  (Chaldee,)  he  offered  or  com- 
mitted. The  Masorites  are  the  line  of  critics  who  have  bequeathed  to  us 
these  traditions.  There  will  be  occasion  to  treat  at  some  length  of  their 
extraordinary  labors,  in  the  sequel. 

t  "  Jus  fas  non  est,  temere  projicere  atque  negligere  ista  interpretum 
publica  ministeria  ;  sed  nee  Judaico  stupore  et  vana  religione  nostros  im- 
plore decet."  Semleri  Apparatus  ad  Lib.  V.  T.  Interpretationem,  lib.  I, 
cap.  1,  §  2. 


12  LAJNGUAGE   OF  THE  [LECT. 

content  to  accept,  as  true,  those  statements  respecting 
the  meaning  of  single  words,  and  the  meaning  of  the 
forms  of  inflexion  and  combination  of  words,  which  in 
the  one  case  the  lexicons  contain,  in  the  other  the 
grammars.  But  they  will  scarcely  fail  to  ask  them- 
selves the  question,  upon  what  evidence  the  truth  of 
those  representations  rests.  Whence  comes  that  knowl- 
edge of  the  Hebrew  language,  which  such  works  pro- 
fess to  convey?  For  we  have  them  not,  as  we  have 
for  the  study  of  Greek  and  Latin,  proceeding  from  the 
time  when  the  language  to  which  they  relate  was 
spoken. 

Our  first  resource  for  the  purpose  of  constructing 
Hebrew  grammars  and  lexicons,  with  which  we  may 
be  satisfied,  is  in  the  unbroken  tradition  in  the'  schools 
and  the  families  of  the  Jewish  race.  Hebrew  has  never 
ceased  to  be  taught,  from  generation  to  generation,  fi-om 
father  to  son,  from  learned  rabbi  to  disciples  who  as- 
pired to  succeed  him.  And,  though  the  instruction  thus 
transmitted  should  be  found  to  be  often  imperfect,  and 
sometimes  erroneous,  still  it  affords  the  desirable  basis 
for  more  exact  and  extended  investigation. 

The  knowledge  so  preserved  is  also  incorporated, 
in  parcels,  into  the  grammatical  and  critical  observations 
of  the  Jewish  doctors  from  the  age  of  the  Talmuds 
down.  But,  as  far  as  we  know,  it  was  first  digested 
into  the  form  of  a  lexicon  by  Menahem  ben  Saruk,  in 
the  eleventh  century.*  This  work  remains  in  manu- 
script. It  was  followed  by  the  much  more  considerable 
collection  of  Rabbi  ben  Jonah,  a  Spanish  physician  ; 
and  this  again  by  the  Lexicon  of  Rabbi  Kimchi,  first 
published  at  Naples  in  1490,  to  which  a  grammar  from 

*  There  was  an  earlier  essay  of  the  glossary  kind,  by  Saadia  Gaon,  at 
Babylon,  in  the  tenth  century  ;  but  it  embraced  only  seventy  words,  inter- 
preted in  Arabic.    He  is  said  to  have  also  composed  a  Grammar. 


I.]  OLD   TESTAMENT.  13 

the  same  hand  succeeded.  Pagninus,  a  Dominican  of 
Lucca,  in  his  Hebrew  Lexicon  and  Grammar,  pub- 
lished early  in  the  sixteenth  century,  furnished,  I  be- 
lieve, the  first  considerable  contribution  to  these  studies 
which  was  made  from  a  Christian  source.  A  new  era 
was  opened  by  the  labors  of  Schultens,  of  Ley  den, 
who  died  in  174L  Of  him  presently  I  am  to  speak 
further  in  a  different  connexion. 

Another  source  of  information  respecting  the  mean- 
ing of  Hebrew  terms  and  forms,  is  found  in  observation 
and  comparison  of  them  in  the  different  connexions,  in 
which  they  occur  in  different  passages  and  books. 
This  has  of  course  been  resorted  to  by  all  lexicogra- 
phers and  grammarians,  in  proportion  to  the  extent  of 
their  investigations,  and  the  good  judgment  with  which 
these  have  been  conducted. 

A  third  and  exceedingly  valuable  source  of  such 
information  is  afforded  by  the  ancient  versions.  Of 
these,  the  Alexandrine  version,  commonly  called,  from 
a  Jewish  fable  respecting  its  origin,  "The  Septuagint"  or 
Seventy,  has  the  greatest  worth  ;  because  of  its  antiquity, 
—  being  referred  to  a  time,  between  one  hundred  and 
three  hundred  years  before  the  Christian  era,  when 
Hebrew  had  hardly  ceased  to  be  a  spoken  language; 
because  of  its  being  made  by  Jews,  who  may  be  pre- 
sumed to  have  well  understood  the  words  and  forms 
they  were  translating ;  and  because  of  their  work  being 
more  available  to  critics  of  the  present  day,  than  other 
ancient  versions  into  languages  less  understood  than 
the  Greek.  But,  in  order  to  derive  all  the  benefit  from 
this  version,  which  at  first  view  it  seems  to  promise, 
we  need  a  purer  text  of  it  than  is  yet  possessed,  and 
more  complete  lexicons  of  the  Hellenistic  dialect  of 
Greek,  into  which  it  was  made.  Nor  is  it  safe  to 
ascribe  to  its  authors,  without  qualification,  a  competent 


14  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  [LECT- 

knowledge  of  the  language  from  which  they  were  trans- 
lating. When  we  are  sure  that  we  have  their  sense, 
we  cannot,  merely  on  that  ground,  be  sure  that  we 
have  a  correct  representation  of  the  origmal,  which  lay 
before  them. 

The  fragments  of  Greek  versions  by  Aquila,  Theo- 
dotion,  and  Symmachus,  referred  to  the  first  two  Chris- 
tian centuries,  have  a  similar,  though  less  important  use. 
The  Peshito  (or  Accurate)  Syriac,  commonly  dated 
from  the  first  or  second  century,  is  an  instrument  yield- 
ing in  importance,  for  the  use  in  question,  only  to  the 
Greek  of  the  Seventy.  It  has  the  further  advantage, 
that,  being  in  a  language  cognate  to  the  Hebrew,  it  is 
able  to  convey  a  peculiarly  exact  representation  of  its 
sense ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  a  less  complete  knowl- 
edge of  it  is  possessed  by  modern  scholars,  than  of  the 
Greek  or  Latin.  The  old  Samaritan  version  of  the 
Pentateuch,  though  reckoned  very  ancient,  loses  part 
of  its  value  from  the  same  circumstance.  Among  other 
aids  of  the  same  kind,  more  or  less  considerable,  are 
the  Chaldee  Targums,  particularly  those  of  Onkelos  and 
Jonathan,  generally  supposed  to  have  been  prepared 
either  before,  or  not  long  subsequent  to  the  Christian 
era,  and  the  Vulgate  Latm,  dating  from  about  the  year 
400.  The  Greek  history  of  Josephus,  though  never 
representing  the  Old  Testament  more  closely  than  in 
the  way  of  a  paraphrase,  yet  is  not  without  its  use  in 
this  connexion. 

It  was  Schultens,  whom  I  have  already  mentioned, 
who  first  began  to  enrich  the  lexicons  through  re- 
searches in  the  cognate  dialects.*    The  fiunily  of  lan- 

•  This  course  of  investigation  was  proposed  and  defended  by  him  in 
his  works  entitled,  "Origines  Hebra?aj,"  "Vindicise  Originum,"  "  De 
Defectibus  Hodiemis  Lingua;  IlebracsB,"  and  "  Institutiones  ad  Funda- 
nienta  Linguaj  Ilebrtea;.'' 


I.]  OLD   TESTAMENT.  15 

guages  to  which  the  Hebrew  belongs,  improperly  called 
by  modern  critics  the  Shemitic,  since  part  of  them  were 
spoken  by  descendants  of  Ham,  appears  to  be  divided 
into  three  main  branches;  1.  What  may  be  called  the 
Canaanitish,  that  is,  the  Hebrew,  with  the  Phoenician, 
afterwards  the  Punic ;  2.  the  Aramean,  embracing  the 
East  Aramean,  or  Chaldee,  and  the  West  Aramean,  or 
Syriac,  to  which  may  be  added,  as  less  important 
subdivisions,  the  Samaritan,  and  the  Palmyrene,  ex- 
hibited in  inscriptions  on  the  ruins  of  Palmyra ;  3.  the 
Arabic,  to  which  are  closely  related  the  Maltese 
and  the  jJEthiopic,  though  this  last,  unhke  the  rest, 
is  read  from  the  left  hand  to  the  right.  It  was  to  be 
presumed  that  these  languages  (part  of  them  preserved 
in  a  much  more  copious  literature  than  the  Hebrew) 
would,  if  diligently  searched  and  judiciously  used,  be 
able  to  throw  much  light  upon  its  etymology ;  that>  for 
instance,  if  the  meaning  of  a  Hebrew  word  remained 
doubtful  or  obscure  in  consequence  of  infrequent  use 
in  scripture,  or  of  insufficient  or  conflicting  authority 
of  the  versions,  it  might  be  traced  and  ascertained  by 
means  of  the  established  use  of  corresponding  words  in 
the  sister  dialects.  Proceeding  in  researches  founded 
on  this  assumption,  Schultens,  by  his  own  labors, 
made  important  contributions  to  Hebrew  lexicography. 
They  have  been  still  further  successfully  pursued  by 
Simon,  the  learned  Professor  of  Sacred  History  and 
Andquities  at  Halle,  whose  work  is  the  basis  of  those 
of  Winer  and  Eichhorn,  well  known  as  containing 
further  collections  of  the  same  authority  ;  and  by 
Gesenius,  whose  Thesaurus,  now  in  process  of  pub- 
lication, will  perhaps  leave  little,  that  is  attainable,  to 
be  still  desired. 

But  it  is  clear  that  conclusions,  sustained  only  or 
chiefly  by  facts  obtained  in  this  way  of  research,  are  not 


16  LANGUAGE  OF  THE  [LECT. 

to  be  received  without  extreme  caution.  It  is  not  only 
that  the  meanings  of  that  (far  the  largest)  class  of  terms, 
which  stand  for  complex  ideas,  are  of  the  most  evanes- 
cent character ;  but,  also,  all  that  exceedingly  numerous 
description  of  words,  which,  in  a  secondary  sense,  bear 
some  figurative  relation  to  the  primitive,  are  likely  to 
receive  altogether  different  applications,  according  as 
the  different  mental  associations  of  diflferent  races  have 
dictated  the  selection  of  one  or  another  sort  of  analogy 
in  fixing  the  metaphorical  use.  For  an  instance  of  the 
former  kind,  who  does  not  see  how  different  is  the 
significance  Of  the  word  virtus,  as  used  by  a  Roman, 
from  that  of  the  same  word,  retained  with  one  or 
another  trifling  change  of  form  in  the  languages  of 
modern  Christendom,  and  how  unsafe  it  would  be  to 
attempt,  by  interpreting  the  one,  to  fix  an  exposition 
of  the  other  ?  An  example  of  the  other  description  is 
furnished  by  a  common  root,  subsisting  with  scarcely 
any  variation  of  form  in  the  English  and  Low  Dutch.* 
In  the  former  speech,  "  to  understand,"  means,  in  a  very 
familiar,  but  a  figurative  use,  to  comprehend.  In  the 
latter,  it  denotes,  with  more  close  adherence  to  the 
primitive  acceptation,  to  sustain;  and  the  correspond- 
ing substantive,  in  like  manner,  signifies  in  the  one  case 
intelligence,  in  the  other  assistance ;  and  the  adjective,  in 
the  one  case  sagacious,  and  in  the  other  helpful.  Were 
we  disposed  to  argue  from  the  force  of  the  Dutch  word 
to  that  of  the  English,  we  might  in  many  instances 
be  repelled,  as  no  good  sense  would  be  produced.  But, 
in  others,  where  the  mistake  would  be  equally  great, 
there  would  be  nothing  in  the  context  to  expose  it. 
For  instance,  in  the  hundred  and  nineteenth  Psalm, 
thirty-fourth  verse,  ("  Give  me  understanding,  and  I  shall 

*  I  take  this  illustration  from  Le  Clerc's  «  Ars  Critica,"  Part  1,  cap.  4, 
§  10. 


J.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  17 

keep  thy  law,")  if  we  were  to  infer,  from  the  analogy 
alluded  to,  that  understanding  meant  help,  we  should 
have  reached  a  good  sense,  but  it  would  not  be  the 
true  one. 

Such  instances  show,  at  a  glance,  the  caution  with 
which  aid  from  the  cognate  dialects  should  be  sought. 
Yet  they  do  not  disprove  the  great  value,  which  such 
assistance  may  possess.  It  may  confirm  the  evidence 
of  one  or  more  versions,  against  the  opposing  authority 
of  others,  which  are  abstractly  of  more  consideration. 
It  may  furnish  a  sense,  where,  from  mere  defect  of 
information  concerning  a  word,  a  text  has  remained 
unintelligible.  And  particularly,  it  may  often  supply  the 
hnks,  by  which  a  secondary  sense  is  connected  with  a 
primary,  when  otherwise  that  connexion  would  be 
imperceptible. 

Some  of  the  statements,  which  have  now  been  made, 
cannot  have  failed  to  make  manifest  the  unreasonable- 
ness of  those,  who  demand  that  the  Old  Testament 
should  be  interpreted  with  the  same  fulness  as  the  New, 
or  who  press  with  equal  confidence  their  own  interpre- 
tations of  its  language.  It  is  out  of  the  question  for 
any  man  to  suppose,  that  he  can  be  acquainted  with 
Hebrew  as  famiharly  and  thoroughly,  as  he  may  be 
acquainted  with  Greek  and  Latm.  We  have  not  so 
much  as  the  rudest  grammar,  or  lexicon,  or  version, 
proceeding  from  the  times  when  any  man  knew  Hebrew 
as  one  knows  his  vernacular  tongue.  We  have  not  an 
extended  Hebrew  literature,  so  that,  by  comparing 
various  connexions  in  which  the  same  word  is  used,  we 
may  arrive,  by  long  approximation,  at  its  varieties  and 
minutiae  of  sense.  On  the  contrary,  the  total  remains 
of  it  are  collected  in  one  volume  of  no  great  bulk,  in 
which,  of  course,  numerous  words  occur  but  a  few 
times,  and  many  not  more  than  once,  while  some,  it  is 

VOL.    I.  3 


18  ;.ANGUAGE  OF  THE  [LECT. 

not  unlikely,  are  mere  errors  of  transcription,  which  it 
is  now  too  late  to  correct.  It  was  besides  a  language, 
in  some  respects,  of  very  inartificial,  and,  we  must 
needs  say,  incomplete  construction,  leaving  room,  in  its 
forms,  for  great  latitude  of  interpretation ;  or,  if  that 
latitude  was  not  in  reality  so  great  as  to  us  it  seems, 
then  it  was  restricted  by  devices,  which  we  at  this  distant 
time  are  unable  to  detect.  The  Umitation,  in  the  forms 
of  the  verbs,  to  three  moods  and  two  tenses,  may  be 
specified  as  a  prominent  imperfection  of  the  kind  of 
which  I  speak.* 

But  even  that  knowledge  of  a  language,  which  so 
partially,  from  unavoidable  circumstances,  'we  possess 
of  the  Hebrew,  is  clearly  far  from  being  all,  which  an 
interpreter  wants  for  the  entirely  satisfactory  execution 
of  his  work,  or  all,  which,  in  the  present  instance,  we 
are  precluded  from  obtaining.  There  are  no  side  lights 
thrown  for  us  upon  the  social  and"  intellectual  condition 
and  habits  of  the  Jewish  people,  by  the  writers  of  other 
nations.  With  very  few  exceptions,  and  those  not  of 
a  nature  to  afford  us  any  aid,  the  earliest  monuments 
of  profane  literature  are  hardly  earlier  than  the  latest 
in  their  sacred  collection.  What  we  would  know  of 
the  growth  and  complexion  of  opinions,  necessarily 
referred  to  more  or  less  in  these  writings  throughout, 
we  must  learn,  as  best  we  may,  from  themselves. 
Their  own  brief  sketch  of  the  national  history  is  all,  on 
that  subject,  which  is  accessible  to  an  interpreter,  when 
he  would  inform  himself,  for  uses  so  importaht  to  his 
task,  concerning  the  feelings   of  the  people,  and  the 

•  "  Patendum  est  eum  conari  «•;%;«?/»)  a-ifaa*  fiiyx  tcZ/uc  S^aXtUftii,  qui 
sperat  se,  subsidiis  memoratis  adjutum,  mediocrem  adepturum  cognitionem 
HebraictB  linguae  ;  hoc  est,  se  earn  ita  intellecturum,  ut  omnibus  in  locis, 
aut  saltern  plurimis,  Veteris  Testamenti,  possit  certo  sibi  persuadere  se 
seque  intelligere  quid  Scriptores  sacri  velint,  ac  olim,  dum  vivebant,  ab 
Hebraeorum  vulgo  intelligebatur."    Clerici  Ars  Critica,  P.  I.  cap.  4,  §  3. 


I.]         ,  OLD  TESTAMENT.  19 

sources  of  illustration  and  allusion  to  which  their  writers 
would  spontaneously  have  recourse.  All  that  can  be 
known  concerning  those  characteristic  national  habits 
of  thought,  which  dictate  the  whole  form  and  taste  of 
composition,  must  be  gathered  from  the  same  inade- 
quate materials.  Yet  more  ;  we  not  only  want  this 
knowledge  respecting  the  individual  nation  in  question, 
in  order  to  the  best  interpretation  of  its  literary  remains, 
but  we  lack  it  even  in  relation  to  that  age  of  the  world's 
history.  And  if  the  habits  of  expression,  and  the  force 
of  the  same  forms  of  speech,  differ  materially,  and  differ 
arbitrarily,  as  we  know  they  do,  in  different  cotempora- 
neous  branches  of  the  same  family  of  nations,  and  that 
too  where  the  modern  link  of  commerce  unites  them, 
much  more  do  they  differ  in  distant  ages,  between 
nations  of  as  different  temperament,  culture,  and  condi- 
tion as  the  Orientals  and  the  modern  civilized  states ; 
and  especially  may  marked  peculiarities  be  reasonably 
looked  for  among  those,  all  whose  thoughts  and  habits 
were  of  domestic,  isolated  origin. 

A  careful  interpreter  will  not  forget  this ;  nor,  by  in- 
sisting that  he  must  present  distinct  statements,  will  he 
be  led  to  take  up  with  error,  where  he  is  under  no 
necessity  of  taking  up  with  any  thing  worse  than  igno- 
rance. Does  any  one  think  it  reason  for  dissatisfaction, 
that  (if  what  has  been  urged  be  just)  God,  in  his  provi- 
dence, has  left  us  so  much  less  capable  of  interpreting 
completely  and  minutely  the  records  of  the  old  cove- 
nant, than  those  of  the  new  ?  He  ought  to  reverse  the 
statement,  and  be  grateful,  that,  profitable  and  interest- 
ing study  as  the  old  dispensation  may  be,  still,  as  the 
old,  as  to  its  direct  authority,  is  superseded  and  obso- 
lete, and  the  new  is  our  authoritative  guide  in  all  matters 
of  faith  and  duty,  we  are  possessed  of  such  superior 
facilities  for  the  exposition  of  the  latter. 


20  CANON  OF  THE  ^LECT. 


LECTURE   II. 

CANON  OP  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT. 
CtJRRE^TT  Views  RESPicTma  aw  Old  Testament  Canon. J— Its  strp- 

POSED    FORJIATION   BT    EzRA,  AND    THE    MeN    OF    THE    GrEAT    StNA- 

GOGUE.  —  Questions  respecting  the  Fact  of  such  a  Coli^c- 
TioN,  AND  Principles  observed  in  making  it.  —  Extent  of  the 
Collection  rendered  in  the  Alexandrine  Version. —  Books 
mentioned  by  Philo.  —  Evidence   from  the   New  Testament, 

FROM     JOSEPHUS,  —   FROM     MeLITO,  —  FROM     OrIGEN,  —  FROM 

Fathers  of  the  Fourth  Century,  —  from  Jerome,  —  from 
THE    Talmud.  —  Conclusion  from  the  whole  Inquiry. 

The  current  opinion  of  Protestant  Christians  respect- 
ing the  Canon  of  the  Old  Testament  is  as  follows : 

Thirty-nine  Jewish  books,  now  extant  in  Hebrew, 
(with  the  exception  of  two,  parts  of  which  are  in  Chal- 
dee,)  were  recognised  by  the  Jews,  while  they  retained 
a  national  existence,  as  containing  the  revelations,  or 
the  authoritative  record  of  the  revelations,  which  God 
had  made  to  their  race.  All  these  books  possess,  if 
not  an  equal,  yet  a  peculiar  character  of  sacredness, 
which,  being  shared  by  no  other  Jewish  writings,  makes 
a  broad  distinction  between  them,  and  the  books  and 
portions  of  books,  which  are  called  Apocryphal.  And 
precisely  this  collection  of  canonical  books,  and  neither 
more,  nor  fewer,  nor  different,  are  referred  to  in  the 
New  Testament  writings,  under  the  names  of  "  the  Holy 
Scriptures,"  "  the  Law  and  Prophets,"  and  "  the  Law, 
Prophets,  and  Psahns." 

It  has  even  been  extensively  believed,  that  Ezra,  on 
the  return  from  the  captivity,  made  a  collection  of  books 
ascribed  by   him  to  divinely  authorized   writers,  and 


II.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  21 

placed  it  in  the  people's  hands,  to  be  their  guide  of  faith 
and  practice.*  Had  we  any  credible  historical  testi- 
mony to  such  a  transaction,  it  would  be  of  the  first 
importance.  But  we  have  none  whatever.  Nor  indeed, 
is  it  possible  that  it  could  have  occurred  in  respect  to 
the  whole  collection  now  received,  inasmuch  as  part  of 
it  is  allowed,  on  all  hands,  to  have  been  composed  after 
Ezra's  time. 

Again ;  there  is  a  Jewish  fable,  that  the  Canon,  as 
above  described,  was  completed  and  arranged  by  a  body 
of  men,  called  the  "  Men  of  the  Great  Synagogue."  f 
Had  it  been  so,  interesting  questions  would  arise, 
respecting  the  authority  and  the  qualifications  of  those 
individuals  for  such  a  work ;  respecting  the  amount  of 
necessary  information  which  they  possessed,  and  the 
degree  of  good  judgment  which  they  exercised.  But 
no  such  body  as  the  Men  of  the  Great  Synagogue  is 
known  in  authentic  history.  The  phrase  seems  to  have 
been  first  used  by  the  Talmudists  for  the  leading  men 
of  the  first  three  centuries  after  the  return  from  Babylon, 
when  spoken  of  collectively,  and  so  gradually  to  have 
come  to  be  used  for  a  supposed  associated  council  of 
such  persons. 

Two  questions  present  themselves  as  of  great  im- 
portance in  this  connexion.  1.  Was  a  Jewish  Canon, 
a  collection  of  books  consisting  of  so  many,  and  no 
more,  ever  settled  by  the  Jews  during  the  time  of  their 
national  existence  ;  that  is,  while  they  could  do  it 
intelligently  ?  And  if  so,  then,  2.  On  what  principles 
was  it  settled  ? 


*  See  Prideaux'a  Connexions,  Vol.  II.  Part.  I.  Book  5.  Year  446,  B.  C. 

t  Prideaux  (Ibid.,  B.  C.  292)  approves  the  view,  that  the  two  books  of 
Chronicles,  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  Esther,  and  Malachi,  were  inserted  into  the 
Canon  by  Simon  the  Just,  whom,  after  Mairaonides  and  other  rabbies, 
he  calls  the  last  of  the  Great  Synagogue. 


22  CANON  OF  THE  [  LECT. 

If  the  former  of  these  questions  should  be  answered 
in  the  affirmative,  the  latter  would  still  remain  a  very 
material  one,  in  respect  to  its  bearing  upon  current 
opinions,  and  upon  Old  Testament  interpretation.  If 
we  knew  that  a  Canon  was  definitely  formed  by  the 
Jews,  on  their  return  from  the  captivity,  or  at  some  later 
period,  we  should  then  need  to  inquire,  for  what  purpose, 
and  on  what  basis,  was  it  formed.  Was  it  intended  to 
embrace  all  the  existing  remains  of  national  literature, 
whether  of  a  religious,  political,  historical,  didactic,  or 
poetical  kind  ?  This  certainly,  upon  abstract  grounds, 
Js  not  an  improbable  supposition.  Or  was  it  designed 
.'to  comprehend  all  writings,  which  for  any  reason  were 
esteemed  particularly  valuable?  Or  was  it  meant  to 
include  all  which  treated  of  sacred  subjects,  and  no 
other  1  Or  was  its  aim  to  give  those  (and  no  other), 
which  were  understood  to  have  been  composed  by 
divinely  commissioned  men  ?  He  who  should  assume 
this  latter  ground,  if  we  knew  that  a  definite  Canon  had 
been  formed,  would  still  have  to  prove  that  it  was  form- 
ed on  the  principle  which  he  alleges,  rather  than  on 
either  of  the  others,  which  in  the  nature  of  things  are 
equally  reasonable;  and  further,  that  it  was  discreetly, 
and  with  sufficient  knowledge,  formed  upon  this  princi- 
ple. And,  in  order  to  prove  this,  it  would  not  be  enough 
for  him  to  urge  passages  of  the  New  Testament,  which 
call  the  Jewish  writings  by  such  names  as  "  the  Holy 
Scriptures ; "  *  for,  supposing  the  phrase  to  have  been 
applied  to  all  the  writings  indiscriminately  which  are 
found  in  our  received  collection,  and  to  no  other,  still  it 
would  remain  to  be  said,  1.,  that  merely  to  give  to 
these  writings,  in  speaking  of  them,  the  name  by  which 
they  were  currently  known,  could  not  safely  be  con- 

*  Rom.  i.  2 ;  2  Tim.  ui.  15. 


II.  J  OLD  TESTAMENT.  23 

strued  into  an  undistinguishing  confirmation  of  all  the  au- 
thority, which  might  in  any  quarter  be  ascribed  to  them  ; 
and,  2.,  that  the  epithet  ^''holy  "  or  "  sacred "  by  no 
means  necessarily  implies  so  high  a  character,  as  that 
of  supernatural  revelation  from  God.  Every  thing  is 
sacred,  which  is  entitled  to  reverence.  Every  thing  is 
holy  to  us,  which  is  connected,  though  it  should  be  but 
remotely,  with  our  religion. 

If  we  knew  the  time  and  author  of  such  a  uniform 
arrangement  as  has  been  supposed,  we  should  have 
some  guidance,  at  least,  in  ascertaining  also  its  princi- 
ples. But  not  only,  as  has  been  remarked,  has  history 
left  us  altogether  in  the  dark  upon  this  point ;  it  must 
be  owned  further,  in  reply  to  the  first  question  above 
proposed,  that  there  does  not  appear  to  have  been  any 
absolutely  uniform  Canon  of  the  Old  Testament,  till 
three  or  four  centuries,  at  least,  after  the  New  Testa- 
ment revelation.  If  this  be  true,  then  it  follows,  not 
only  that  the  uniformity  was  introduced  at  a  period  too 
late  to  admit  of  its  being  intelligently  done,  but  still 
more,  that,  m  giving  this  kind  of  definiteness  to  what 
earlier  times  had  left  indefinite,  a  contradiction  was 
offered  to  the  truth  of  history.  If  before,  and  at  the 
time  of  our  Saviour,  the  Jews  did  not  know,  that  pre- 
cisely the  books  which  compose  their  and  our  present 
received  Canon  possessed  a  peculiar  and  exclusive 
character  of  sacredness,  then  it  never  could  become 
known  to  the  Jews,  for  instance,  of  the  fourth  century ; 
since  it  could  only  be  through  the  channel  of  that  earher 
age,  that  the  opinion,  allowing  that  it  was  a  correct  one, 
could  have  come  down  to  this  later. 

Of  testimonies  to  the  extent  of  a  Jewish  collection  of 
sacred  books,  the  most  ancient,  and  therefore  one  of 
especial  value,  is  that  of  the  Alexandrine  Version.  If, 
in  the  three  centuries  before  Jesus'  advent,  there  existed 


24  CANON  OF  THE  [  LECT. 

such  a  Canon,  as  has  been  supposed,  and  if  it  is  to  be 
presumed  that  Jewish  translators  would  have  observed 
it  in  making  a  version  into'  Greek,  then  it  was  not  the 
same  with  the  now  established  Canon,  inasmuch  as,  in 
addition  to  the  books  herein  contained,  the  Alexandrine 
version  comprises  nearly  all  the  matter,  embraced  in 
our  English  collection  called  the  Apocrypha. 

Philo  the  Jew,  of  Alexandria,  a  copious  writer,  con- 
temporary with  our  Saviour,  is  naturally  looked  to  for 
information  on  this  subject.  He  gives  us,  however,  no 
account  of  a  Jewish  Canon,  though  he  quotes,  or  refers 
to,  nineteen  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  applying  to 
some  of  them  such  titles  as  "The  Prophetic  Word," 
"  Sacred  Writings,"  &c.  Of  the  others  received  by  us, 
he  makes  no  mention ;  and  on  the  other  hand  he  occa- 
sionally borrows  expressions  from  writings  which  we 
reckon  as  Apocryphal. 

Leaving  the  Egyptian  Jews,  the  earliest  authority,  to 
which  we  can  have  recourse  for  the  prevaihng  opinion 
on  this  subject  in  Palestine,  is  the  New  Testament.  It 
is  thought  to  refer  in  some  way  to  all  the  books  of  the 
Old,  except  six  ;  *  but  it  nowhere  says  any  thing  of  a 
Canon,  either  in  the  use  of  that  expression,  or  any 
equivalent.  As  to  any  number  of  books,  intended  to 
be  embraced  in  designations  Avhich  it  employs,  its  lan- 
guage is  altogether  indefinite.  If  one  should  speak  of 
the  "English  Classics,"  it  would  be  quite  safe  to  infer 
that  he  meant  to  include  Milton  and  Shakspeare,  and 
some  others,  in  the  description ;  but  how  comprehensive 
he  designed  it  to  be,  would  be  left  uncertain.  So  he, 
who  spoke  of  the  "  Sacred  Scriptures  "  to  Jews,  would 
certainly  be  understood  as  not  intending  to  omit  the 
writings  of  Moses ;  but  his  language  would  not  define 

•  Judges,  Ecclesiastes,  Canticles,  Esther,  Ezra,  Nehemiah.  Seventeen 
of  the  thirty-nine  books  are  not  directly  quoted. 


jr.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  26 

how  many  others  were  associated  in  his  mind  under 
that  title,  nor  would  it  convey  his  opinion  that  it  did 
pisrtain  at  all  to  a  precise  and  immutable  number. 

Josephus,  the  Jewish  historian,  was  contemporary  with 
the  Aposdes,*  a  priest,  and  a  Pharisee.  A  passage  from 
his  writings  is  the  most  important,  that  is  adduced  in 
this  controversy  in  favor  of  the  prevailing  opinion.  I 
give  it  below,  f     The  following  is  a  correct  translation  ; 

"  There  are  not  with  us  myriads  of  books,  inconsistent 
and  conflicting ;  but  only  twenty-two,  comprising  a 
record  of  all  time,  which  are  justly  confided  in.  And 
of  these,  five  are  the  books  of  Moses,  which  em- 
brace laws  and  the  tradition  "of  the  origin  of  man, 
extending  to  his  death.  This  period  falls  a  Httle  short 
of  three  thousand  years.  And  from  Moses'  death  to 
the  reign  of  Artaxerxes,  king  of  the  Persians  after 
Xerxes,   the   prophets  "after  Moses  wrote   in   thirteen 

*  He  was  born,  A.  D.  37. 

f  Oil  ykfl  ftupiait;  (iiSxiu)>  iiffi  Ta^'  vfiiv,  airufi^cituv  xat  /ta^oftiviuv  '  oua  oi 
ftiv»  *gej  roTs  uxoffi  {iiSXiet,  vou  <xetirit  £;t«VT«  x?'""  '■^'  a'^yfa^ivj  t*  hxaiui 
[S-ira]  vnitiVTtoftifa.  Ka}  riuTUf  **»rt  fiif  l^ri  rk  M.tStiuSt  £  revs  rt  tifteoi 
trffii^ei  xeu  rin  tJJj  ivB^^utroyetSees  *a^a.doiri)i,  fti^fi  r^l  eturtu  rtXturnS'  OS<r»s 
i   ^pitos  d^oXtiXti   TgtffX'^'^*  ixiyav   ST«»y.       'Afr»   St   rijj    MaiuVsiv;    TsXturti;    f^X" 

T«  *«t'  auToui  -r ja;^('sy ras  ffuviy^ayirat  sv  roiir)  xai  Stxa  jiiSxitti,  At  Ss  Xaiftai  ritf'- 
<rapts  v/ivous  lis  to*  Qilt  xai  Tils  dvf^uTois  vToSnxas  tou  fiitu  •Ttpiix^iJif'*'  'Aa'a  S< 
'A*r«|s«|9y  /^*X"'  "^"^  **^*  »("«;  Xi^'^"  yiyoaxTcit  fiii)  txarra  '  xiffTius  Jj  »ux 
i/Attias  tl^iurcti  <rtii  <rjo  altTuVy  iia,  ra  i*.ri  yivsr^ai  Ttiv  fut  v^o^titZ*  dxaiSij  ^laSax^iy- 
AqA.«v  3 '  ifTif  tf yAi,  treif  i/iui  Tots  ti'tets  yadfifutffi  rtTtiTTivxafiiv.  TtrauTav  yig 
aiuta;  ^n  Tap^x*!"'''''!'  *"'''*  *^e(r6iii»i  tjs  audit,  aUrt  dipsXii*  ai/Tcii,  evTt  (AtTaiittat 
TiroXftfiKi.  Tleirt  oi  tri/i^urat  trm  tufv;  (x  rjjf  spurns  ytAaiais  'latJSeciais,  Ta 
M/iiXiiy  eti/Toi  Qtau  oiy/tttTa,  xeti  ravTatt  ift/i,i>tiv,  xa)  urip  avTuv,  it  oiai,  9-fiiirxsiv 
niiais '  ^»)  aut  TeXXai  traXXdxts  \u^»tTat  tui  aiXf^aLXuTun,  iTTeiCXecs  xat  tairaiti* 
^avaTut   Tooxovs   l»   ^taT^ai;  urey-ivatTts,   iTi  t»  fitiSif  tr^aiff^ai  vaoa,  raus   vi/nov;   xat 

rks  ftira.  Tourcai  ifayoaipas.  Joseph,  conlra  ApioD.  lib.  1,  §  8.  The  word  ^7x, 
which  would  require  the  last  clause  of  the  first  period  to  be  rendered, 
"  wliich  are  justly  considered  divine,"  has  crept  into  the  late  editions  of 
Josephus,  from  Eusebius's  quotation  of  the  passage,  in  his  Ecclesiastical 
History,  lib.  3,  cap,  10.  See  Eichhorn's  Einleitung  in  das  A.  T.,  §  40. 
Havercamp  notes  upon  it ;  "  Illud  ^uk  ex  EuKobio." 

VOL.    L  4 


26  CANON  OF  THE  [LECT. 

books  the  things  done  in  their  times.  The  remaining 
four  comprise  hymns  to  God,  and  rules  of  Hfe  for  man. 
From  Artaxerxes  down  to  our  time,  every  thing  has 
been  recorded.  But  these  records  are  not  accounted 
worthy  of  equal  credit  with  those  before  them,  because 
the  succession  of  prophets  has  not  been  exact. 

"  And  it  is  plain  in  our  conduct,  what  credit  we  have 
given  to  our  own  scriptures.  For,  though  so  long  a 
time  has  passed,  no  one  has  ventured  to  add  any  thing 
to  them,  nor  take  away  from  them,  nor  alter  them. 
But  it  is  innate  with  Jews  from  their  very  birth,  to 
esteem  them  directions  of  God,  and  adhere  to  them, 
and  even  cheerfully  to  die  for  them,  if  need  should  be. 
And  many  captives  have  often  been  seen,  bearing 
tortures  and  every  kind  of  death  in  the  theatres,  rather 
than  admit  a  word  against  the  laws,  and  the  records 
[interspersed,  or  connected]  with  them." 

If  it  was  essentially  the  more  numerous  books  of  our 
present  Canon,  that  were  meant  by  Josephus  to  be 
comprehended  within  the  number  twenty-two,  such  a 
distribution  of  them,  by  whomsoever  made  or  adopted, 
was  obviously  a  device  to  conform  the  number  to  that 
of  the  letters  in  the  Hebrew  alphabet ;  and  accordingly  it 
required  an  arbitrary  arrangement  of  the  contents  of 
the  several  divisions,  which  greatly  impairs  the  apparent 
definiteness  of  the  statement.  Modern  critics  differ 
in  making  this  distribution.  Unquestionably  the  under- 
taking is  attended  with  difficulty.  If  Josephus  had  our 
present  Canon  in  view,  where,  for  instance,  did  he 
arrange  the  book  of  Job,  to  which  individually  he  never 
alludes?  Not  among  books  of  "hymns  to  God,  and 
rules  of  life  for  man,"  for  the  four  places  of  that  collec- 
tion are  wanted  for  the  Psalms,  Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes, 
and  Canticles,  the  last  three  of  which  books  he  also 
never  names.     And  it  may  be  thought  that  there  are 


II.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  27 

strong  objections,  from  the  structure  of  the  book  of  Job, 
to  supposing  that  Josephus  intended  to  refer  to  its 
author  as  one  of  those  "prophets  after  Moses,"  who' 
"wrote  in  thirteen  books  the  thing?  done  in  their  times." 
Further,  Josephus  says  that  the  second  division  of  books, 
referred  to  by  him,  proceeded  from  writers,  who  lived 
between  Moses,  and  Artaxerxes,  successor  of  Xerxes ; 
that  is,  Artaxerxes  Longimanus.  But  Artaxerxes  Lon- 
gimanus  died  in  424,  B.  C.  And  the  prophecy  of  Mala- 
chi  at  least,  now  making  part  of  our  Canon,  has  always 
been  referred  to  a  later  period. 

I  will  not  propose  to  regard  Josephus  as  expressing, 
in  the  first  period  of  the  quotation  given  above,  his 
individual  sense  of  the  peculiar  authority  of  certain 
books,  twenty-two  in  number.  It  is  true,  that,  as  a 
mere  question  of  grammar,  there  would  be  no  difficulty 
in  understanding  him  to  have  used  the  plural  number  for 
the  singular  [us  for  me'] ;  and  so  I  perceive  he  is  actually 
interpreted  in  the  version  of  Bradshaw,  who  cannot  be 
thought  to  have  had  in  view  the  argument,  which  I  am 
supposing,  founded  on  his  translation  of  the  words. 
The  context,  however,  seems  to  be  opposed  to  such  a 
rendering.  I  gather  from  the  passage,  that,  as  early  as 
Josephus'  time,  there  had  been  made  an  enumeration, 
under  the  heads  of  the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  of  books 
bearing  upon  the  national  history  previous  to  the  time 
of  Artaxerxes  Longimanus ;  that  this  enumeration,  in 
its  third  class,  included  didactic  and  devotional  writings 
ascribed  to  two  distinguished  monarchs  of  Israel,  these 
having  connexion  with  their  biographies  and  the  history 
of  their  reigns  ;  and  that  it  had  acquired  sufficient 
currency  to  justify  Josephus  in  referring  to  it.  The 
arrangement  may  even  be  supposed  to  have  been 
adopted  by  the  Pharisees  as  a  body,  being  entirely  in 
the  punctilious  spirit  of  criticism,  characteristic  of  that 


28  CANOJS  OF  THE  [LECT. 

sect ;  to  which  also,  as  has  been  remarked,  Josephus  was 
attached.  To,  those  who  made  it,  the  books  belonging 
to  the  older  times  were  all  invested,  by  the  venerable 
association  of  antiquity,  with  a  peculiar  sacredness ;  and 
a  suitable  date  for  division  between  the  older  and  recent 
times  was  afforded  by  the  reign,  of  Artaxerxes  Longi- 
manus,  when  Nehemiah  had  restored  the  Jewish  city 
and  worship. 

The  force  of  the  second  paragraph  above  quoted,  and 
its  degree  of  connexion  with  the  first,  may  perhaps  be 
rendered  more  apparent  by  a  few  observations  on  the 
design  of  the  passage,  and  on  its  place  in  the  general 
argument  wherein  it  is  introduced.  Josephus  is  speak- 
ing of  the  twenty-two  books,  in  their  character  of  trust- 
worthy historical  documents.  His  treatise  against  Apion 
is  a  vindication  of  his  "  Jewish  Antiquities,"  from  the 
censures  of  that  writer.  Why,*  he  asks,  should  all  the 
world  persist  in  looking  for  true  history  only  to  the 
Greeks?  The  Greeks  are  the  worst  of  authorities, 
instead  of  the  best.  They  are  comparatively  moderns. 
Their  oldest  writings  are  recent.  They  have  taken  less 
pains  t  with  their  monuments  and  records,  than  other 
nations ;  and  their  authors,  though  numerous,  are  often 
mutually  opposed  J  in  their  testimony,  having  written, 
for  the  most  part,  with  a  view  to  popular  applause.^ 
The  Egyptians,  II  Babylonians,  and  Chaldeans  have 
exercised  more  caution  in  this  respect.  Especially  have 
the  registers  of  the  Jews  been  well  kept  by  their  priests 
and  prophets.  Few  persons  have  been  permitted  to 
write  among  us;  and  we  meet  with  no  contradictions 
among  those  who  have  written.  Then  follows  the 
passage  I  have  cited,  in  which  Josephus  says,  referring 
to  an  arrangement  of  books  relating  to  ancient  history, 

•  Cont  Apion.  lib.  1,  §  2.  f  Ibid-  §  4.  f  Ibid.  §  3. 

^  Ibid.  §  5.  II  Ibid.  §  6,  7. 


II.  ]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  29 

that  they  may  all  be  reckoned  under  the  number  twenty- 
two  ;  adding  that  the  documents  he  had  in  view  were 
composed  by  an  uninterrupted  succession  of  prophets, 
an  opinion  which  may  well  have  prevailed  to  a  wide 
extent  among  his  countrymen,  in  the  age  when  he  lived. 

In  the  second  paragraph  of  the  quotation,  he  urges 
the  constant  credit  given  by  the  Jews  to  their  national 
records,  while  the  Greeks  were  perpetually  engaged  in 
altercations  concerning  the  truth  of  theirs.  In  proof 
of  this,  he  alleges  their  attachment  to  those  laws  of 
theirs,  which  made  so  important,  and  to  foreigners  so 
peculiarly  questionable  a  part  of  their  national  history, 
and  to  which  all  the  rest  bore  a  certain  relation.  •  They 
observe  scrupulously  in  respect  to  them,  he  says,  the  pre- 
cept given  in  Deuteronomy.*  Though  so  many  centuries 
have  passed,  no  one  has  ventured  to  "add  any  thing,  or 
remove  any  thing,"  or  make  sfij  change.  It  is  instinc- 
tive with  Jews  to  regard  them  as  God's  ordinances,  and 
adhere  to  them  as  such ;  and,  sooner  than  admit  a  word 
against  "the  laws  and  the  records  with  them,"  it  is 
well  known  that  our  people  will  die  in  torments. 

These  observations,  I  think,  show  that  it  is  impossible 
to  identify  a  number  of  documents  for  history,  of  which 
Josephus  spoke  as  referable  in  some  way  to  twenty-two 
heads,  with  those  ordinances  of  God  for  which  he  de- 
clares his  countrymen  to  be  willing  to  die  in  torments. 
He  does  not,  it  must  be  allowed,  express  himself  with 
the  accuracy  which  he  would  have  used,  had  his  de- 
sign been  to  guard  against  any  misapprehension  of  his 
words,  in  their  bearing  on  that  question  of  our  modem 
technics,  to  which  we  now  apply  them.     Then  it  is 

*  iv.  2 ;  xii.  32.  The  precept  relates  only  to  the  Law,  strictly  so  called. 
I  have  not  remarked,  that  Josephus'  reference  to  it,  which  almost  amounts 
to  a  verbal  quotation,  has  been  before  pointed  out.  But  it  appears  to  me 
very  obvious,  and  to  be  material  to  the  b^st  understanding  of  the  passage. 


41 


SO  CANON  OF  THE  [LECT. 

likely  he  would  have  gone  on  to  say,  that  the  care  of 
the  Jews  for  preserving  the  law,  properly  so  called,  in 
its  primitive  purity,  and  their  willingness  to  encounter 
any  evil  sooner  than  incur  the  guilt  of  doing  it  a  wrong, 
communicated-  to  them  a  habit  of  similar  circumspection 
in  respect  to  all  writings,  which  had  a  relation  to  it,  and 
to  the  history  of  its  expositions  and  of  its  influence.  It 
is  true,  that  he  points  out  no  such  distinction,  by  means 
of  any  mark  of  transition  between  the  periods,  which  I 
have  set  off  as  the  beginning  and  end  of  separate  para- 
graphs. But  there  is  at  least  as  great  inexactness  of 
composition  (if  such  it  be  thought)  at  the  beginning  of 
the  last  period  of  the  first  paragraph,  where  every  one 
will  allow  that  there  is  an  ellipsis,  requiring  to  be  sup- 
plied by  a  translator  ;  and  what  was  uppermost  in 
Josephus'  mind  is  abundantly  evident  from  his  specifica- 
tion, at  the  end  of  the  passage,  of  "  the  laws  and  the 
records  with  them."  And  if  any  one  should  even  think, 
that  there  is  some  spirit  of  exaggeration  in  the  language, 
it  was  no  more  than  what  was  very  natural  in  the  case, 
nor  more  than  we  find  fully  paralleled  m  the  context. 
In  the  period  immediately  preceding  the  quoted  pas- 
sage, it  is  said  that  there  is  "  no  discrepance  in  the 
records  "  for  history  referred  to  ;  an  assertion  impossible 
to  be  made  by  a  person  acquainted,  like  Josephus,  with 
the  books  of  Kings  and  Chronicles,  if  he  were  studi- 
ous of  accuracy  in  his  statement. 

The  sum  of  the  whole,  then,  divested  of  inferences 
improperly  drawn  from  the  second  paragraph,  I  take  to 
be  this.  The  Jews  are  said  by  Josephus  to  have  a 
number  of  books,  including  the  books  of  Moses,  or  the 
Law,  understood  by  them  to  have  been  written  in  their 
ancient  times,  (viz.  previously  to  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes 
Longimanus,  when  their  city  and  worship  were  restored,) 
which  books  a  practice  had  been  introduced,  we  know 


n.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  31 

not  how  extensively,  of  an-anging  under  twenty-two 
heads,  corresponding  to  the  number  of  letters  of  the 
Hebrew  alphabet.  Respecting  the  manner  of  making 
this  distribution,  there  could,  it  is  tme,  have  been  no 
very  great  difference  of  opinion ;  for  the  books  under- 
stood by  all  Jews  to  have  this  antiquity,  must  have  been 
to  a  great  extent  the  same.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
fact  of  the  use  of  this  eniimeration,  by  no  means 
establishes  the  fact  of  a  uniformity  of  opinion  respecting 
the  collection,  or.  respecting  its  several  heads.  An 
agreement  among  any  number  of  persons  to  reckon 
theh*  ancient  books  in  this  manner,  so  partially  abridged 
the  latitude  of  opinion  concerning  the  individual  authority 
of  this  or  that  writing,  that  whatever  difference  the 
nature  of  the  case  admitted,  may  perfectly  well  have 
continued  to  exist.  The  book  of  the  Minor  Prophets, 
for  example,  was  reckoned  as  one.  He,  then,  who  did 
not  see  fit  to  include  in  it  the  book  of  Jojiah,  or  who 
rejected  from  it  any  number  of  these  compositions, 
greater  or  less,  (provided  the  number  rejected  by  him 
did  not  exhaust  the  book)  would  still  agree  to  the 
received  enumeration.  Job  might  or  might  not  be 
reckoned  among  the  thii'teen  prophets,  by  one  who 
approved  the  general  scheme ;  for,  if  he  scrupled  to 
reckon  that  book  among  documents  relating  to  Jewish 
history,  he  would  separate  Nehemiah  from  Ezra  in  his 
computation,  or  Ruth  from  Judges,  or  Lamentations 
from  Jeremiah,  and  so  keep  the  number  full.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  the  truest  sphit  of  the  arrangement,  and 
with  the  same  propriety  that  the  different  books  of 
Jeremiah  are  reckoned  as  one,  a  friend  to  our  (so  called) 
Apocryphal  book  of  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon  would 
attach  it  to  the  Proverbs  attributed  to  that  monarch. 
Our  Apocryphal  books  of  Ezra  would  be  naturally 
arranged  in  the  same  class  with  the  other  book  or  books 


32  CANON  OF  THE  [  LECT. 

bearing  the  same  title.  Nor,  in  short,  would  there  be 
any  difficulty  in  disposing  any  part  of  our  Apocryphal 
collection,  or  of  other  Jewish  writings  whose  antiquity 
could  not  be  disproved,  under  the  same  number  of 
divisions  which  Josephus  has  assigned. 

Remarking  only  further,  that  it  is  safe  to  infer,  that 
Josephus  had  heard  of  no  time  nor  author  of  a  formal 
arrangement  of  a  Canon,  else  he  could  hardly  have 
foiled  to  mention  them  in  the  connexion,  I  proceed 
next  to  the  mention  of  the  authority  of  Melito,  Chris- 
tian bishop  of  Sardis  in  Lydia,  dated  by  Cave  and 
Lardner,  about  A.  D.  170.  His  works,  of  which 
Eusebius*  and  Jerome  t  have  preserved  catalogues, 
to  the  number  of  twenty,  are  all  lost,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  a  few  fragments.  He  is  the  first  writer, 
who  gives  us  a  detailed  list  of  any  Old  Testament  col- 
lection. In  that  list.  Lamentations,  Nehemiah,  and 
Esther  are  not  included;  but  they  were,  probably  enough, 
viewed  as  appendages  of  the  books  of  Jeremiah  and 
Ezra  respectively,  and  reckoned  under  those  names. 
What  I  regard  as  of  much  more  importance  is  the 
implication,  in  the  language  of  Melito,  that,  at  Sardis,  in 
Asia  Minor,  a  place  not  remote  from  Palestine,  nor  un- 
frequented by  Jews,  the  constituent  parts  of  the  Old 
Testament  records  were  not  a  subject  of  notoriety  (as 
it  would  seem  they  could  not  fail  to  be,  if  they  had  been 
anciently  and  authoritatively,  or  in  any  way  definitely 
and  by  common  consent,  established) ;  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, a  subject  of  curiosity.  "  Since,"  he  writes  to  his 
brother,  or  friend,  Onesimus,  as  his  words  are  preserved 
by  Eusebius,  J  "  in  thy  zeal  for  the  word,  thou  hast  often 

*  Hist  Eccl.,  lib.  4,  cap.  26.  f  De  Vir.  lUust,  cap.  24. 

I   Hist.  Eccl.,  lib.  4,  cap.  26.      MtXiru*    'OvnirifiM    rZ  ahXiff  X"'?'"  '   f*'*'^'l 


II.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  33 

desired  to  have  selections  from  the  Law  and  the 
Prophets  concerning  the  Saviour  and  the  whole  of  our 
faith,  and  hast  also  wished  to  obtain  an  exact  statement 
of  the  ancient  books,  how  many  they  were  in  number, 
and  what  was  their  arrangement,  I  took  pains  to  effect 
this,  understanding  thy  zeal  for  the  faith,  and  thy  desire 
for  knowledge  in  respect  to  the  word,  and  that  in  thy 
devotion  to  God  thou  esteemest  these  things  above  all 
others,  striving  after  eternal  salvation.  Having  come 
therefore  to  the  East,  and  arrived  at  the  place  where 
these  things  were  preached  and  done,  and  having 
accurately  acquainted  myself  with  the  books  of  the  old 
covenant,  I  have  subjoined  and  sent  them  to  thee.  Of 
which  the  names  are  these ;  of  Moses,  five ;  Genesis, 
Exodus,  Leviticus,  Numbers,  Deuteronomy  ;  Joshua, 
son  of  Nun,  Judges,  Ruth ;  four  of  Kings,  two  of  Chroni- 
cles ;  a  book  of  Psalms  of  David,  the  Proverbs  of  Solo- 
mon, and  the  Wisdom,*  Ecclesiastes,  the  Song  of  Songs, 
Job ;  of  prophets,  books  of  Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  ;  writ- 
ings of  the  twelve  prophets,  in  one  book ;  Daniel, 
Ezekiel,  Ezra;  from  which  also  I  have  made  selections, 
distributing  them  into  six  books." 

I  will  not  extend  the  discussion  beyond  reasonable 
limits,   by   raising  any  question   as   to   the   degree  of 

*tt}  fi(ttt7i  till  Tu*  iraXai^f  fii€Xia>r  ISooX^im  ax^iSiitif,  iriffn  toy  dpi^f/if  xa,)  iteTx 
T«»  T«|<»  uif,  ir^iviaffx  ri  reitvre  trja^a/,  tTia'Ta/tffii  fev  ra  ff^ouiaToi  irtgi  rtiv 
vifriv,  xa)  (piXo/tctffis  tt^i  r«»  Xoyov,  on  ri  ftiXifra  Ta^ruy  tUm  tu  ^f»i  Qtir 
raura  *^»k(iviis,  a-iji  t«j  aiuynu  vum^ias  dyati^ifiiroi  '  dnXfait  eu»  tii  <riii  ivart- 
Xnf,  xai  tvf  rau  ravau  yttiftiyos  itSa  ixn^u^fn  xai  i^pip^ifi,  xai  dx^iZSf  it.ct(iii  <ra 
Tn;  'Xa.Xatki  dtauHxm  (iiSXieCf  uTard^a;  i^iff^d  rat  '  eSy  iffri  ra.  avifcara  '  MwuViAff 
iriwrt  '  Tinirts,  'K^a^os,  Aiuirixay,  'A^itftai,  ^VTS^atifiuay  '  'Inravs  tlaiuri,  Keirat, 
'Paufi '  "BtKriXuZr  rifffa^te,  Tla^aXsdxatciiieiii  iua  '  ^aXfiuv  Aa^jS,  ^aXafiunaf  Tlei- 
^atfiiect,  ii  xai  2af<«(,  'EiXxXnriaffTriSy  "Af/^ca  ' AfftaTait,  'ItiS,  TifafnTiir,  'HfettaUf 
'It^tfiiau  '  rati  euioixet  (v  /iiafeSiSXa)  '  Aoyj^X,  'Ii^ixifiX,  'Erdfas  •  If  u>  xai  ixXayait 
iTttwdfitif,  tif  <|  liiSXia  2iiX<vy. 

*  This  translation,  if  correct,  brings  our  apocryphal  book  of  Wisdom 
into  Melito's  catalogue.  To  avoid  this,  some  render,  "  which  is  also 
called  Wisdom." 

VOL.    I.  5 


V* 


»• 
34  CANON  OF  THE  [LECT. 

AC 

Strictness  with  which  we  ought  to  interpret  Eusebius's 
declaration,  that  he  has-  accurately  reported  the  words 
of  Melito.  Nor  will  I  propose  any  different  interpreta- 
tion of  the  passage  from  that  commonly  received,  though 
the  accurate  knowledge,  which  Melito  declares  himself 
to  have  obtained  respecting  the  books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, might  be  argued,  with  some  plausibility,  to  relate 
to  the  contents  of  books  named  by  him,  from  which  he 
subjoined  selections,  rather  than  to  a  specific  number 
of  the  books,  of  which  he  subjoined  a  list.*  What  I 
am  content  alone  to  urge  here,  is,  that,  towards  the  end 
of  the  second  century,  there  was  a  question,  among 
inquisitive  Christian  men  at  Sardis,  respecting  the 
authorities  of  the  Jewish  faith ;  a  question  which,  I 
submit,  could  not  possibly  have  been  raised  in  any  such 
form,  had  there  existed  a  Canon  of  the  definiteness  and 
authority  commonly  supposed;  for  it  would  then  have 
been  a  matter  of  uniform  consent  and  of  general  noto- 
riety, wherever  there  were  Jews.  And,  if  it  did  not 
exist  in  that  age,  there  were  of  course  none  but  critical 
grounds,  on  which  the  questions  relating  to  it  could  be 
discussed  and  determined  afterwards.  And  a  determi- 
nation resting  on  critical  grounds  is  open  to  the  revision 
of  critics  of  any  later  age ;  these  latter,  of  course,  taking 

*  He  says,  indeed,  that  his  correspondent  had  not  only  wished  to  pos- 
sess extracts  from  the  ancient  Jewish  scriptures,  but  also  to  learn  how 
many  they  were,  and  in  what  order  disposed  ;  that  is,  to  ascertain,  as  we 
might  say,  a  Canon  of  them.  But  this  latter  wish,  in  respect  to  the  num- 
ber of  books,  it  does  not  appear,  so  distinctly  as  has  been  assumed,  that 
Melito  had  found  himself  able  in  any  way  to  gratify ;  while,  in  regard  to 
their  order,  at  least,  (a  point  which,  in  the  question,  has  equal  definiteness 
and  prominence  witli  the  number)  it  must  be  owned  that  his  answer  is 
altogether  peculiar.  He  writes  that,  when  he  had  come  to  the  East,  he 
sought  and  obtained  accurate  information  respecting  the  books  of  the 
old  covenant,  that  is,  books  relating  to  that  dispensation.  But  that  he 
had  been  informed  by  any  one  of  a  definite  collection  of  such  books,  of 
an  authoritative  character  not  shared  by  others,  is  what  it  is  not  so  clear 
that  he  does  say. 


U.  ]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  35 

care  to  respect  the  judgments  of  their  predecessors,  as 
far  as  they  have  reason  to  believe,  that  those  judgments 
rested  on  sufficient  grounds. 

The  most,  then,  to  be  inferred  from  the  testimony 
of  Melito,  as  it  is  commonly  understood,  would  be,  that 
on  diligent  inquiry,  during  his  travels  in  the  East,  and 
apparently  in  Palestine,  he  had  become  acquainted,  as 
he  thought,  on  credible  authority,  with  an  Old  Testa- 
ment collection,  composed  of  the  books  which  he  speci- 
fies. And  then  not  only  should  we  remain  ignorant  of 
the  degree  of  credibility  of  his  informers,  of  the  degree 
of  confidence  with  which  they  entertained  their  opinion, 
and  the  extent  to  which  it  prevailed  ;  but,  much  more, 
their  view  would  also  be  shown  to  be  of  limited  preva- 
lence, by  the  fact  that  it  had  to  be  inquired  after  by 
inhabitants  of  Asia  Minor,  to  say  nothing  of  its  being 
contradicted  by  the  larger  list,  furnished  by  the  much 
more  ancient  authority,  the  authors  of  the  Alexandrine 
Version. 

The  next  material  evidence  is  that  of  Origen,  in  the 
beginning  of  the  third  century,*  who,  in  a  passage  pre- 
served by  Eusebius,t  gives  a  full  list  of  books,  on  the 
authority,  as  he  says,  of  Hebrews.!  They  are  twenty- 
two  in  number,  as  he  disposes  them,  the  arrangement 
having  reference,  as  he  expressly  affirms,  to  the  number 
of  alphabetical  elements.^  All  the  books  of  the  now 
received  Canon  are  included,  except  the  Minor  Proph- 
ets ;  and  the  two  books  of  Maccabees,  reckoned  as  one, 
are  added  to  complete  the  alphabetical  number.  The 
now  Apocryphal  book  of  Baruch,  reckoned  with  Jere- 
miah, is  also  introduced  into  the  list. 

*  He  was  bom,  according  to  Lardner  (Credibility,  Part  2,  chap.  38), 
A.  D.  184,  and  died  in  253. 
t  Hist  Eccl.,  lib.  6,  cap.  25. 


36  CANON  OF  THE  [LECT. 

A  legitimate  inference  from  this  passage  of  Origen 
appears  to  be,  that,  the  alphabet  having  come  to  be  re- 
garded by  the  Jews  in  the  enumeration  of  their  sacred 
writings,  the  list  was  made  up,  as  to  the  less  considera- 
ble books,  by.  a  somewhat  arbitrary  selection,  some 
being  introduced  into  one  catalogue  and  some  into 
another.  The  fact  that  Origen  has  given  to  the  Minor 
Prophets  a  place  in  his  "Hexapla,"  does  not  affect  our 
knowledge  of  his  opinions,  nor  throw  any  light  upon  our 
inquiry.  The  nature  of  his  enterprise  required  that  he 
should  do  so,  whatever  was  his  estimation  of  those 
works.  For,  at  least,  they  were  contained  in  the 
Alexandrine  Version,  which,  in  his  Hexapla,  he  has  un- 
dertaken to  exhibit.  The  Hexapla  is  lost,  and  only 
fi-agments  have  been  recovered.  There  is  no  reason  to 
doubt,  that,  in  its  complete  state,  it  contained  books  which 
are  not  found  in  the  received  Canon,  because  such  books 
»  were  comprehended  in  the  versions  which  it  collated, 
"  if  not  then  extant  in  Hebrew.  And,  in  point  of  fact, 
we  have  the  testimony  of  Bahrdt,*  that  fragments  of 
Origen's  collation  of  the  Maccabees  and  Judith  in  his 
great  work,  yet  exist  in  some  manuscripts. 

Beyond  Origen,  I  shall  not  pursue  in  detail  the  testi- 
mony of  the  Egyptian  Christians  upon  this  subject. 
The  following  admission  of  Eichhornf  will  suffice  to  show, 
that  the  evidence  from  that  father,  which  has  been  ex- 
hibited, is  less  adverse  to  the  common  theory,  than  that 
of  the  generality  of  others,  who,  like  him,  may  be  sup- 
posed to  have  had  their  information  from  Egyptian  Jews. 
"The  Egyptian  Christians  accounted  the  Apocryphal 
writings  of  *  the  Old  Testament  to  be  worthy  of  high 
estimation.    After  them,  or  their  Septuagint  version,  the 

•  Origenis  Hexaplorum  quse  supersunt,  cum  Notis  a  C.  F.  Bahrdt,  Tom.  i. 
p.  168. 
t  Enleit.  ins  A.  T.,  §  310. 


n.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  37 

Ethiopians  divided  the  Old  Testament  into  four  parts. 
I.  The  Octateuch,  consisting  of  the  five  books, of  Moses, 
Joshua,  Judges,  and  Ruth.  II.  The  Kings,  -in  thirteen 
books ;  viz.  the  two  books  of  Samuel,  two  of  Kings, 
two  of  Chronicles,  two  of  Ezra  (Ezra  and  Nehemiah), 
Tobias,  Judith,  Esther,  Job,  Psalms.  III.  Solomon,  in 
five  books ;  Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes,  Canticles,  Wisdom, 
and  Sirach.  IV.  The  Prophets,  in  eighteen  books  ; 
Isaiah,  Jeremiah's  Prophecy  and  Lamentations,  Ba- 
ruch,  Ezekiel,  Daniel,  and  the  twelve  Minor  Prophets. 
They  had  besides  two  books  of  the  Maccabees." 

Authorities  in  the  fourth  century  are  less  important ; 
but  they  go  to  show^,  that  no  uniformity  had,  up  to  that 
time,  been  estabhshed.  Athanasius,  of  Alexandria, 
(A.  D.  326  -  373)  in  a  fragment  generally  allowed  to  be 
genuine,  of  a  work  called  the  "Festal  Epistle,"  intro- 
duces a  list,*  by  saying ;"  The  books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment are  all  of  them  in  number  two  and  twenty  ;  for  so 
many  are  the  letters  of  the  Hebrew  alphabet  said  to 
be."  It  does  not  include  Nehemiah,  by  name,  though 
probably  Athanasius  intended  it  as  the  "  Second  Book 
of  Ezra,"  of  which  he  speaks.  He  also  embraces  Ba- 
ruch,  and  a  work  called  "The  Epistle." f  Of  the  Wis- 
dom of  Solomon,  the  Wisdom  of  Sirach,  Esther^  Judith, 
and  Tobit,  he  says,  that  they  are  "  not  canonical  indeed, 
but  ordained  by  the  fathers  to  be  read  by  neophytes." 
—The  list  of  Cyril  J  of  Jerusalem,  (A.  D.  315-386)  has 
the  same  contents  with  our  own  Canon,  except  that, 
like  that  of  Athanasius,  it  embraces  Baruch  and  "  The 
Epistle."  —  Epiphanius^  of  Cyprus  (whose  death  is 
dated,  A.  D.  403)  includes  all  the  books  of  our  received 

*  Athanasii  Sancti  Opera,  Tom.  i.  p.  962.     (Montfaucon's  edition.) 
t  The  same  which  is  now  appended,  as  a  sixth  chapter,  to  our  book  of 
Baruch. 
\  Cyrilli  Hierosolymitani  Opera,  p.  66.    (Milles's  edition.) 
§  Epiphanii  Sancti  Opera,  p.  19.    (Paris  edition.    1622.) 


38  CANON  OF  THE  [LECT. 

catalogue,  adding  also  to  the  Lamentations  of  Jeremiah, 
his  "Epistle,"  and  the  'Epistle  of  Baruch.  — On  the  other 
hand,  the/ouncil  of  Carthage  (A.  D.  397)  decreed  as 
follows;  f  "It  is  our  pleasure,  that,  besides  the  canoni- 
cal scriptures,  nothing  be  read  in  the  church  under  the 
name  of  divine  scriptures.  Now  the  Canonical  Scrip- 
tures are ;  Genesis,  Exodus,  Leviticus,  Numbers,  Deu- 
teronomy, Joshua  son  of  Nunj  Judges,  Ruth,  two  books 
of  Kings,  Job,  one  book  of  Psalms,  five  books  of  Solo- 
mon, twelve  books  of  the  Minor  Prophets,  also  Isaiah, 
Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  Daniel,  Tobit,  Judith,  two  books  of 
Ezra,  and  two  of  the  Maccabees."  While  wer  here 
find  the  titles  of  some  books  not  approved  in  later  times, 
we  see  no  mention  of  Chronicles,  and  none  apparently 
of  Esther.  The  "  two  .books  of  Kings  "  probably  em- 
braced what  we  call  the  books  of  Samuel.f 

Coming  down  to  Jerome,  (who  died  A.  D.  420)  J 
and  the  Talmudists  of  the  fifth  century,  we  obtain  evi- 
dence of  a  definitive  settlement  of  their  Canon  by  the 
Jews. 

In  his  "Prologus  Galeatus,"^  Jerome  says,  that,  as 
there  are  twenty-two  letters  in  the  Hebrew  alphabet,  so 
the  Hebrews   have   that  number  of  books ;  |{   and  of 

K^      ,     •  See  Lardner's  Works,  Vol.  il  p.  574,  (4to.) 

*  t  I  <5o  not  adduce  the  authority  of  the  60th  canon  of  the  council  of 

Laodicea,  (referred  to  a  time  near  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century,)  the 
genuineness  of  that  canon  being  so  extremely  suspicious.  Its  list,  and 
for  the  most  part  the  arrangement,  are  the  same  with  those  of  Cyril. 

X  This  is  the  date  of  his  death  commonly  adopted  by  ecclesiastical 
historians.  Some  writers  would  place  it  a  year  or  two  earlier,  or  later. 
But  their  difference  is  not  material.  See  Lardner's  Works,  Vol.  ii. 
p.  532. 

§  This  Prologue  may  be  found  in  the  common  editions  of  the  Vulgate, 
prefixed  to  the  version  of  the  books  of  Samuel  and  Kings,  the  first 
books  which  Jerome  translated.  He  calls  it  "  galeatus,"  or  "  helmeted," 
because,  as  he  says,  "  being  the  beginning  of  his  labors  on  the  Old 
Testament,  it  may  serve  as  a  head  to  what  is  to  foUow." 

II  "Quomodo  igitur  viginti  duo  elementa  sunt,  per  quae  scribimus 


II.  J  OLD  TESTAMENT.  39 

these  he  proceeds  to  give  a  list,  distributing  them  into 
three  divisions.  The  first  division  contains  the  Law,  the 
five  separate  books  of  which  he  designates  by  their 
Hebrew  and  Greek  titles.  The  second  division  con- 
sists of  the  Prophets ;  viz.  Joshua  ;  Judges,  with  Ruth  ; 
two  books  of  Samuel,  and  two  of  Kings,  each  pair 
being  reckoned  as  one  ;  Isaiah  ;  Jeremiah,  with  Lamen- 
tations ;  Ezekiel;  and  the 'book  of  the  twelve  Minor 
Prophets.  The  third  class,  he  says,  is  called,  Hagio- 
grapha,*  (holy  writings,)  and  is  composed  of  Job,  the 
Psalms,  three  books  of  Solomon,  viz.  Proverbs,  Ecclesi- 
astes,  and  Canticles  ;  Daniel ;  Chronicles  ;  Ezra,  in  two 
books,  (including  our  Nehemiah)  ;  and  Esther.  "  What- 
ever," he  adds,  "does  not  belong  to  this  list,  is  apocry- 
phal ; "  and  he  specifies  as  such  the  books  of  Wisdom, 
of  Jesus  son  of  Sirach,  of  Judith,  of  Tobit,  and  of  "  the 
Shepherd."  He  elsewhere  speaks  f  of  Baruch,  and  of 
our  apocryphal  portions  of  Daniel,  in  the  same  manner. 
In  another  place,  viz.  in  a  letter  to  Paulinus,t  (computed 
to  have  been  written  about  A.  D.  396,)  he  gives  a  cata- 
logue in  all  respects  the  same,  except  that  there  are 
some  transpositions  of  the  names  of  the  books. 

The  same  collection  of  books,  which,  at  the  end  of 
the  fourth  century,  had  come  to  be  received  by  Jews  as 
of  distinctive  authority,  to  such  an  extent  as  to" lead  ^ 
Jerome  to  speak  of  it  in  the  terms  above  quoted,  is 
also   specified   in   the  Babylonish   Talmud.§      In   that 

Hebraic^  omne  quod  loquimur,  et  eorum  initiis  vox  humana  comprehendi- 
tur ;  ita  viginta  dno  volumina  supputantur,  quibus  quasi  Uteris  et  exordiis 
in  Dei  doctrina,  tenera  adhuc  et  lactans  viri  justi  eruditur  infantia." 

•  The  origin  of  this  viciously  formed  Greek  word  is  doubtful.  It  has 
been  ascribed  to  Aquila,  author  of  one  of  the  versions  into  Greek. 

t  Opera,  Tom.  v.  pp.  261,  567.     (Edit  Erasm.) 

i  Ibid.  Tom.  iii.  pp.  7,  8. 

§  It  is  material  to  observe  this  distinction.  There  are  two  Talmuds, 
that  of  Jerusalfem,  and  that  of  Babylon ;  the  one  consisting  of  the 
"Mischna"  and  the  "  Jerusalem  Gheraara" ;  the  other,  of  the  Mischna,  and 


40  CANON  OF  THE.  [LECT. 

compilation  we  find  the  following  catalogue ;  The  Law  ; 
The  Prophets,  consisting  of  Joshua,  Judges,  Samuel, 
Kings,  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  Isaiah,  the  Twelve ;  and  The 
Writings,  (D^DID^)  or  Hagiographa,  viz.  Ruth,  Psalms, 
Job,  Proverbs,  Ecclesiastes,  Canticles,  Lamentations, 
Daniel,  the  roll  of  Esther,  Ezra,  and  Chronicles. 

The  hst  of  Jerome,*  and  of  the  Talmud  is  the  same, 


the  "Babylonish  Ghemara,"  The  Mischna,  (or  " second  law,"  so  highly 
do  the  Jews  speak  of  it,)  is  reputed  to  have  been  compiled  by  Judah 
Hakkadosh,  (or  the  Holy)  who  completed  his  work  at  some  time  be- 
tween A.  D.  190  and  220.  (See  Ugolini  Thesaurus,  Vol.  ii.  p.  55; 
Vol.  xvii.  p.  263.)  The  Ghemaras,  to  use  Ugolino's  language,  consist  of 
"  discussions  and  controversies  upoji  the  Mischna."  That  of  Jerusalem 
was  published  by  Rabbi  Johanan,  in  or  about  A.  D.  370.  (Ibid.,  Vol.  i. 
p.  129.)  That  of  Babylon,  the  work  of  Rabbi  Ase,  dates  from  A.  D.  500. 
(Ibid.,  Vol.  i.  p..  131.)  Eichhorn,  in  citing  that  testimony  of  the  Talmud- 
ists,  with  which  we  are  now  concerned,  merely  dates  it  with  the  words 
"Sec.  II.-IV."  (Einleitung  ins  A.  T,,  Vol.  i.  p.  136),  thus  ascribing  it 
to  some  time  previous  to  the  year  400;  and  then  refers  to  the  book 
"Bava  Bathra,"  for  authority.  The  original  book  Bava  Bathra,  is  part 
of  the  Mischna,  making  the  third  chapter  of  the  fourth  book  of  that 
collection.  If  (belonging  to  so  early  a  period)  the  Mischna  exhibited 
the  enumeration  of  Sacred  Writings  in  question,  the  fact  would  be  of  the 
first  importance.  But  it  contains  nothing  of  the  kind.  The  passage  is 
found  in  the  Babylonish  Ghemara,  in  Volume  viii.,  folio  14,  page  2,  (near 
the  foot,)  of  Morinus's  edition.  I  give  the  reference  particularly,  because 
this  edition,  without  an  index,  or  any  other  of  the  usual  aids  for  examina- 
tion of  its  contents,  is  the  only  one,  to  which  in  this  vicinity  we  have 
access. 

•  No  aid  is  to  be  derived  to  our  investigation  from  the  versions  ascribed 
to  the  period  between  the  Christian  era,  and  Jerome's  version,  or  the 
Vulgate.  Of  the  Chaldee  "  Targums,"  or  Paraphrases,  none  but  those 
of  Onkelos  and  Jonathan,  embracing  only  the  Pentateuch  and  the  Proph- 
ets, can  be  dated,  with  any  probability,  so  far  back.  —  The  Old  Samaritan 
versions  do  not  extend  beyond  the- Pentateuch.  —  The  Old  Italic  version 
(supposing  this  name,  derived  from  a  passage  in  Augustine,  to  be  rightly 
applied)  is  extant  only  in  fragments.  Having  been  made  from  the  Greek 
of  the  Septuagint,  it  is  to  be  presumed  that  its  contents  corresponded 
with  those  of  that  collection.  —  The  Syriac  version,  as  exhibited  in  Wal- 
ton's Polyglott,  (where  it  was  reprinted  from  that  of  Paris,  with  the 
further  aid  of  four  manuscripts,)  embraces  most  of  the  Apocryphal 
books  ;  viz.  the  Third  book  of  Esdras,  Tobit,  Judith,  Wisdom,  Ec- 
clesiasticus,  Baruch,  "  the  Epistle  "  of  Jeremiah,  the  Additions  to  Daniel, 


II.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  41 

Avhich,  at  the  time  of  the  Reformation,  was  adopted  by 
the  Protestant  churches,  and  to  which  they  have  ever 
since  adhered.  The  Romish  church,  at  the  same  time, 
at  the  Council  of  Trent,  (A.  D.  1545-6,)  sanctioned 
that  of  the  Vulgate,  which  contains,  beside  the  books 
translated  by  Jerome,  most  of  those  which  exist  in  the 
AJexandrine  Version,  they  having  been  preserved  in 
the  Vulgate  from  the  older  translation,  commonly  known 
by  the  name  of  the  Italic* 

I  have  urged,  at  the  greater  length,  the  lateness  of 
the  period,  at  which  the  Jews  came  to  a  definitive 
agreement  respecting  the  Canon  of  their  scriptures, 
because  of  the  confidence,  with  which,  in  our  times,  a 
different  opinion  is  entertained.  But,  before  I  leave  the 
subject,  1  would  recur,  in  a  word,  to  the  other  question, 
presented  m  the  beginning  of  these  remarks.  If,  in- 
stead of  having  to  refer  to  the  fourth  or  fifth  century  for 
a  specific  determination  of  canonical  books,  we  could 
trace  it  to  the  time  of  Josephus  and  Philo,  or  the  time 
of  the  Maccabees,  or  of  Simon  the  Just,  still  that  de- 
termination would  not  be  authoritative  for  us ;  nor  would 
it  have  a  claim  to  our  adoption  upon  any  grounds,  inde- 
pendent of  the  reasons,  which  we  might  find  to  have 
justified  the  original  arrangement,  or  of  other  reasons 
which  might  now  weigh  with  our  own  minds. 

On  the  most  impartial  and  careful  estimate,  therefore, 
which  I  am  able  to  make  of  the  whole  evidence,  I  find 
myself  unauthorized  to  acquiesce  in  the  prevailing  opin- 
ion, described  in  the  beginning  of  this  Lecture,  respect-      /** 
ing  a  similar  and  a  distinctive  authority  of  thirty -nine 

and  the  two  books  of  Maccabees.  But  the  history  of  that  version  is 
obscure,  and  there  is  good  reason  for  believing  that  part  of  these  books, 
at  least,  were  not  in  the  original  "Peschito."  See  Eichhorns  Einleit. 
in  das  A.  T.,  §  252. 

*  Simon,  Histoire  Critique   du   Vieux   Testament,  liv.  2,   chap.   11. 
Home's  Introduction,  Vol.  i,  p.  293. 
VOL.    I.  6 


42  CANON  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT.      .  [LECT. 

books  of  the  Old  Testament,  pertaining  to  them  as 
severally  comprehended  in  an  authoritative  Canon.  I 
cannot  thus  confound  Ecclesiastes',  or  the  Canticles,  with 
Exodus.  For  aught  that  I  can  learn,  that  which, 
a  priorij  would  be  strongly  probable,  actually  took  place  ; 
and,  after  the  period  of  the  composition  of  all  those 
books,  concerning*  which  a  question  could  now  arise, 
single  books,  or  different  partial  collections  of  books, 
were  in  different  Jewish  hands,  being  severally  held  in 
different  degrees  of  esteem  by  different  persons ;  the 
Law,  for  instance,  being,  received  by  all,  and  the  books 
of  the  Maccabees,  for  instance,  being  prized  and  sought 
by  some,  and  not  by  others.  I  find  no  way  to  avoid 
•the  opinion,  that,  as  in  the  New  Testament  collection, 
so  in  the  Old,  the  several .  books  are  to  be  judged  on 
their  several  and  independent  grounds  of  evidence ;  and 
that,  further,  the  mere  circumstance  of  being  excluded 
from  the  established  Canon,  and  stigmatized  by  the 
title  of  Apocryphal,  should  not  prevent  other  books 
from  having  their  claims  considered.  I  find  nothing  in 
history  to  simplify  the  labor  of  a  critic  on  the  Jewish 
scriptures,  by  satisfying  him,  that,  by  mere  force  of  bemg 
found  embraced  in  the  now  received  collection,  a  book 
is  to  be  acknowledged  for  an  authoritative  teacher  of 
faith  or  practice.  This  is  what,  I  conceive,  he  has  first 
to  ascertain,  before  he  is  justified  to  proceed  upon  it  as 
a  fact. 


111.  ]  TEXT  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT.  43 


LECTURE   III. 

TEXT  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT. 


The  Text  of  the  Law  subject  to  be  vitiated  by  Copyists,  pre- 
viously TO  the  Separation  of  the   Kingdoms.  —  ^formation 

RESPECTING  ITS  EARLY  CONDITION  TO  BE  DERIVED  FROM  THE  SA- 
MARITAN Pentateuch.  —  Controversy  respecting  the  Origin 
OF  the  Samaritan  Copy.  —  History  of  the  Text,  to  the 
TIME  OF  Ezra,  —  of  the   Alexandrine   Version,  —  of   Origen, 

OF     THE     MaSORITES,   OF      THE     INVENTION     OF     PRINTING.  

Printed  Editions. — Impossibility  of  forming  a  whole  Criti- 
cal Text.  —  Recapitulation  of  principal  ante-Masoretic 
Authorities. 

The  condition  of  the  Text  of  the  Old  Testament, 
in  respect  to  genuineness  and  purity,  presents  another 
important  inquiry  to  the  interpreter  of  its  contents. 

We  know  nothing  of  any  critical  labors  expended 
upon  the  Text,  before  the  third  century  of  the  Christian 
era.  Up  to  that  time,  and,  in  a  less  degree,  for  a  much 
longer  period,  as  will  presently  appear,  it  was  exposed 
to  those  chances  of  corruption,  through  mistakes,  and 
possibly  through  design  of  transcribers,  which  are  known 
to  have  taken  effect  on  other  ancient  writings.  Nor  is 
there  any  reason  to  suppose,  that  divine  Providence 
protected  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  by  means 
independent  of  human  care,  any  more  than  that  it  so 
protected  the  books  of  the  New  Testament,  which  we 
know,  however,  not  to  have  been  dispensed,  in  this 
respect,  from  the  common  lot  of  writings  frequently 
transcribed. 

For  the  purpose  of  the  present  investigation,  we  may 
safely  assume,  what  in  its  proper  place  I  shall  maintain, 


44  TEXT  OF  THE  [LECT. 

that  the  books  attributed  to  Moses  were,  in  feet,  sub- 
stantially his  production ;  since,  if  any  one  should  de- 
termine otherwise,  our  results  would  be  no  further 
affected  in  his  mind,  than  that,  proposing  a  later  date 
for  the  origin  of  those  writings,  he  would  understand 
them  to  have  been  subject  to  dangers  of  corruption 
through  a  less  time.  F(3r  the  same  reason,  I  may  be 
permitted,  for  the  present,  to  suppose  the  general  cor- 
rectness of  the  common  opinion, '  respecting  the  succes- 
sion in  which  the  other  part's  of  the  Old  Testament 
collection  were  composed. 

At  the  close  of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy*  we  read, 
that  Moses,  having  "  made  an  end  of  writing  the  words 
of  the  Law  in  a  book,  until  they  were  finished,"  commit- 
ted the  volume  to  the  Levites,  directing  them  to  lay  it 
up,  by  or  "  in  the  side  of  the  ark  of  the  covenant  of  the 
Lord,"  to  remain  there,  after  his  death,  "  for  a  witness," 
against  the  people,  when  they  should  violate  its  pro- 
visions. As  the  national  code,  it  was  of  course  fit  that 
it  should  be  deposited,  under  responsible  public  charge, 
at  that  place  which  was  at  once  the  political  centre  of 
the  nation,  and  which,  from  its  religious  sanctity,  would 
extend  to  it  the  most  effectual  protection. 

Were  copies  early  multiplied?  This  is  a  question, 
which  we  can  answer  only  on  grounds  of  probability ; 
but  I  think  it  must  be  allowed  that  these  are  extremely 
strong.  There  was  no  policy,  requiring  that  the  people 
should  be  kept  in  ignorance  of  the  contents  of  the  law. 
On  the  contrary,  as  it  was  designed  for  the  constant 
regulation  of  their  conduct,  means  were  expressly  pre- 
scribed for  its  periodical  promulgation  to  them.f  There 
was  no  policy,  requiring  that  its  use  should  be  restricted 
to  oral  communication  through  the  priests.      On   the 

•  xxxi.  24-27.  t  Deut  xxxi  10-13. 


m.]  OLD   TESTAMENT.  45 

contrary,  it  was  prescribed  as  a  duty  for  every  king, 
when  Israel  should  assume  a  royal  government,  to  make 
a  copy,  with  his  own  hand,  on  his  accession  to  the 
throne.*  A  great  familiarity  with  it  was  urged  upon  the 
people  at  large,  in  terms  which  imply,  that  a  disposition 
to  study  it  with  all  possible  aids  would  not  only  not  be 
thwarted,  but  be  commended  and  encouraged.f  Magis- 
trates were  not  ta  execute  their  trusts  at  tt^e  central 
seat  of  authority  alone ;  they  were  dispersed  among  the 
cities  of  all  the  tribes ;  t  and  the  homes  of  the  Levites, 
whose  whole  official  function  consisted  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  religious  law,  were  to  be  in  separate 
communities,  remote  from  the  tabernacle.^  It  appears 
to  the  last  degree  improbable,  that  numerous  copies  of 
the  Law  would  not  be  provided,  at  least  for  the  use  of 
those  numerous  classes  of  persons,  on  whose  intelligent 
application  of  it,  so  much,  by  its  own  provisions,  was 
made  to  depend. 

If  copies  from  Moses'  autograph  were  made,  one  is 
safe  in  saying,  on  the  ground  of  universal  experience, 
that,  made  with  whatever  care,  they  were  not  immacu- 
late ;  and  that  the  list  of  errors  was  increased  with  each 
successive  transcription.  An  exact,  undeviating,  written 
copy  of  a  composition  of  considerable  length,  if  we  may 
not  call  it  an  impossible  achievement,  is  probably  a  work 
of  which  no  example  exists.  An  amanuensis,  intend- 
ing to  give  a  strict  representation  of  an  existing  manu- 
script, is  deceived  by  his  eye ;  or  by  his  ear,  if  he  writes 
from  dictation ;  or  he  omits,  or  repeats  a  word  or  a  pas- 
sage, where  successive  words  or  passages  have  similar 
endings  or  beginnings ;  or,  having  read  a  clause,  he  trusts 
his  memory  while  he  writes  it,  and  erroneously  puts 
down  a  word  synonymous  with  the  original,  or  of  similar 

*  Deut  xvii.  18  -  20.  \  Ibid.  vL  6-  9 ;  xi.  18  -  21. 

t  Ibid,  xvi  18.  §  Ibid.  xxxv.  1  -8 ;  Joshua  xxi.  1  -  42. 


46  TEXT  OF  THE  [LECT. 

sound ;  or,  observing  that  he  has  omitted  a  word  or  a 
phrase,  he  subjoins  it,  rather  than  deface  his  copy,  and 
thus  produces  a  transposition ;  or,  finding  in  the  margin 
of  the  page,  from  which  he  is  transcribing,  a  remark 
which,  in  the  first  instance,  was  only  a  gloss,  he  mistakes 
it  for  an  omission,  which  the  previous  transcriber  had 
accidentally  made^  and  had  thus  supplied,  and  ac- 
cordingly, adopts  it  into  the  body  of -his  own  text. 

These  are  some  of  the  most  common  mistake^,  uni- 
versally incident  to  transcription  from  a  written  page. 
A  transcriber  of  bolder  genius  will  venture  on  the  cor- 
rection of  .what  strike  him  as  deviations,  for  instance, 
from  good  grammar  or  rhetoric,  presuming  them  to  have 
been  errors  of  the  copyist  whose  work  is  before  him ; 
or  he  will  introduce  illustrations,  or  more  full  or  satis- 
factory expressions,  from  some  other  book,  or  some 
different  part  of  the  same ;  or  he  will  add  a  few  words 
by  way  of  explanation ;  or,  for  the  better  information  of 
his  readers,  he  will  modernize  words,  especially  proper 
names ;  or  he  will  even  go  so  far  as  to  change  an  ex- 
pression for  some  other,  which,  through  convictions  of 
his  own,  appears  to  him  better  to  represent  the  author's 
views,  conforming  it  to  what,  when  the  scriptures  are 
the  writings  in  question,  is  called  the  analogy  of  the 
jfaith, 

"  How  far,  and  in  what  comparative  degrees,  these  and 
the  like  causes  of  error  afiected  the  early  copies  of  the 
writings  of  Moses,  supposing  th,at  copies  were  made, 
we  have  now  very  inadequate  means  of  determining.  I 
only  add,  that,  apart  from  such  always  operative  causes 
of  accidental  error  as  have  been  named,  it  would  be 
unreasonable  to  suppose  that  the  obligation  of  a  copyist 
simply  to  present  an  exact  transcript  of  his  original, 
(without  any  action  of  his  own  mind,  except  to  the  end 
of  securing  such  identity,)  could  have  been  felt  in  those 


III.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  47 

remote  ages,  before  such  a  sciejice  as  textual  criticism 
had  entered  any  one's  imagination.  And  if  I  should  be 
reminded  of  the  solemnity,  with  which  any  addition  to 
the  law,  or  omission  from  it,  is  forbidden,*  let  it  suffice 
to  say  at  present,  that  he  who  would  interpret  this 
prohibition  as  relating  to  the  verbal  contents  of  the 
book,  and  contend  that  it  was  rigidly  observed,  will  have 
also  to  take  the  ground  that  the  Pentateuch  was  not  the 
work  of  Moses,  inasmuch  as  there  are  parts  of  it,  which 
could  not  have  proceeded  from  his  hand. 

If  we  could  show  the  common  opinion  respecting 
what  is  called  the  Samaritan  Pentateuch,t  to  be  well- 
founded,  we  should  obtain  important  aid  towards  de- 
termining the  condition  of  the  text  of  the  Law  at  the 
time  of  that  great  revolution,  the  revolt  of  the  ten  tribes 
under  Jeroboam,  in  the  year  975,  B.  C,  about  five 
centuries  after  Moses'  death.  That  opinion  (at  first 
confidently  urged,  and  in  *he  last  and  the  present  cen»- 
tury  still  maintained  by  many  critics  of  the  first  con- 
sideration,) is,  that  the  Samaritan  text  has  descended 

*  Deut  iv.  2. 

f  The  Samaritan  Pentateuch  is  to  be  carefully  distinguished  from  the 
Samaritan  Version  of  the  same  books.  The  latter  work  is  in  the  Samari- 
tan dialect,  a  branch  of  the  Aramaean.  The  former  is  a  peculiar  critical 
instrument,  being  simply  the  Hebrew  text  of  Moses'  five  books,  exhibited, 
without  a  vowel  punctuation,  in  Samaritan  letters.  Some  references  by 
ancient  Christian  fathers  to  the  existence  of  such  a  work  in  their  times 
had  been  observed.     For    instance,   Origen   says ;   Ka)  reurSy  ftini^oniu 

MwvVq;  ly   Tots  trparei;  reu   j\iUTi^aiafiiau,  a  xeii  at/ru  I*  r««/  •rut  Zafia^itTut  'EiQ^ai- 

xau  fttrtSaXefiiif.     Hexapla  ad  Num.  xiii.  1 —  And  again,  Ka)  rtwrS*  ftlfirtirect 

M«w<r5j  £»  /^turt^etefiiu,  &  J»  fiivois    fSv  2«;/*«»f/Tar»  tSfia/att.      Ibid.,  au  JNum.  XXi. 

13.  —  And  Jerome ;  "  Samaritani  etiam  Pentateuchum  Mosis  totidem 
Uteris  scriptitant,  figuris  tantum  et  apicibus  discrepantes."  Prologus  Ga- 
leatus.  —  "  Superfluura  est  quod  in  Samaritanorum  volumine  reperitur 
(Gen.  iv.  8) ; '  Transeamus  in  campum.' "  Opera,  (Ed,  Erasmi,)  Vol.  iii.  p.  203. 
But  till  the  seventeenth  century,  it  was  not  known  to  be  still  extant.  In 
1616,  a  copy  was  brought  from  Damascus  to  Paris,  from  which  the  text 
was  printed  in  the  Paris  Polyglott,  and  subsequently  in  that  of  London. 
Other  copies  have  been  since  obtained. 


48  TEXT  OF  THE  [LECT. 

by  successive  transcriptions  from  copies,  written  in  the 
ancient  character,  which  were  in  circulation  among  the 
northern  tribes,  at  the  time  of  the  revolt ;  and  that  ac- 
cordingly it  represents,  substantially,  the  text  of  those 
copies.  This  view  has  found  opponents  ;  particularly, 
of  late,  among  critics  who  hold  to  a  comparatively 
modern  compilation  of  the  Pentateuch.  By  some  (as 
Le  Clerc,)  the  Law  has  been  supposed  to  have  been  in- 
troduced into  Samaria  by  the  priest  sent,  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  eighth  century  before  our  era,  to  instruct  its 
new  inhabitants  in  the  religion  of  the  country.*  Others 
(among  whom  Gesenius  is  most  conspicuous)  have  un- 
derstood it  to  have  been  carried  thither  by  Manasseh,t 
brother  of  Jaddus,  the  Jewish  high-priest,  when,  influ- 
enced by  his  Samaritan  father-in-law,  he  instituted  the 
Mosaic  worship  in  a  temple  built  upon  Mount  Gerizim  ; 
while  others  yet  (as  Archbishop  Usher)  have  proposed 
theories  assigning  to  it  a  more  recent  date.  . 

The  argument  has  taken  so  wide  a  range,  that  I  can- 
not so  much  as  state  its  heads,  within  the  limits,  which  I 
am  bound  to  observe.  I  must  content  myself  here  with 
expressing  the  opinion,  that  a  person  who  holds  to  the 
Mosaic  origin  of  the  Pentateuch,  will  find  strong  reasons 
in  favor  of  the  hypothesis  ojf  the  descent  of  our  Samari- 
tan text,  from  copies  possessed  by  the  northern  tribes, 
previously  to  the  separation  of  the  kingdoms.  The 
impossibility  of  the  reception  of  Jewish  books  by  the 
Samaritans,  at  any  later  period,  on  account  of  the  heredi- 
tary hostility  between  those  communities,  though  the 
view  is  not  without  great  weight,  has  perhaps  been  urged 

*  2  Kings  xxvii.  24-28. 

t  His  time  is  differently  dated;  by  some,  (as  by  Gesenius,  after  Jose- 
phus,)  near  the  end  of  the  fourth  centiu-y  before  Christ,  or  the  age  of 
Alexander  the  Great ;  by  others,  (as  Prideaux  and  Jkhn,)  a  hundred  years 
earlier. 


III.]  OLD   TESTAMENT.  49 

in  too  unqualified  terms,  and  without  sufficient  considera- 
tion of  the  different  manner,  in  which  the  Samaritan  ter- 
ritory was  peopled  at  different  epochs.  But,  as  long  as 
the  ten  tribes  continued  a  constituent  part  of  the  united 
nation,  if  copies  of  the  law  were  in  circulation  at  all, 
there  were  copies,  without  doubt,  in  their  possession. 
After  their  secession,  I  think  it  will  not  appear  that  there 
was  ever,  during  the  period  of  their  independent  ex- 
istence, any  thing  like  a  universal  apostasy  from  the 
Mosaic  religion.  This  being  so,  and, particularly  if  the 
Law  continued  to  make  the  civil  code  of  the  northern 
kingdom,  it  would,  in  that  community,  no  more  than  in 
the  Jewish,  be  in  danger  of  suppression  or  neglect ;  nor 
does  any  good  ground  occur  ior  supposing  (what,  if  the 
view  which  recommends  itself  to  me,  be  rejected,  is  the 
only  alternative),  that,  the  manuscripts  existing  in  the 
country  having  ceased  to  be  copied,  and  been  lost,  it 
became  necessary  to  introduce  others  from  abroad,  to 
supply  the  need,  when  it  came  to  be  felt. 

Thus  much  may  be  reckoned  certain ;  that,  at  what- 
ever period  the  divergency  of  the  Samaritan  text  from 
that  now  extant  in  the  square  character  took  place,  the 
received  readings  of  the  Pentateuch  at  that  period  were, 
for  the  most  part,*  the  same  that  we  now  find  them  in 
the  passages,  in  which  the  testimony  of  these  two  inde- 
pendent authorities  accords ;  that  is,  in  far  the  greater 
portion  of  the  matter  contained  in  the  Mosaic  books. 
And  if  we  find  any  reasons  to  conclude,  that  readings, 
supported  by  their  joint  authority,  are  still  deviations 
from  the  original  writing,!  it  becomes  necessary  to  sup- 

*  I  say  "  for  the  most  part "  ;  because,  though  essentially  kept  indepen- 
dent by  tlie  different  character  of  their  alphabet,  and  the  estrangement 
between  the  communities  which  used  them,  it  is  not  impossible,  that,  in 
single  instances,  either  may,  in  later  times,  have  been  conformed  to  the 
other. 

t  That  such  is  the  fact,  there  can  scarcely  be  a  doubt  on  any  part  See, 
VOL.    I.  7 


50  TEXT  OF  THE  [LECT. 

pose,  that  the  corruption  was  introduced  previous  to  the 
period  of  their  divergency  from  each  other,  whether  we 
assign  that  divergency  to  the  eighth  century  before  our 
era,  or  to  the  fourth  or  fifth,  or  to  a  later  time. 

The  civil  and  religious  frame  of  the  Jewish  state, 
overthrown  in  the  Chaldean  conquest,  was  restored 
by  Ezra  and  his  coadjutors,  as  far  as  might  be,  accord- 
ing to  the  ancient  model,  in  the  fifth  century  before  our 
era.  They  referred  to  the  written  law  for  this  purpose. 
Whence  did  they  obtain  that  document  ?  Is  there  any 
reason  to  suppose,  that  Ezra  was  in  possession  of  that 
autograph  of  Moses,  which  a  thousand  years  before  had 
been  deposited  by  the  side  of  the  ark  1  If  not,  did  he 
use  a  copy,  which,  under  public  authority,  had  succeeded 
to  the  place  of  that  autograph  in  the  sacred  archives, 
or  a  copy,  which  had  reached  him  through  private 
hands  ? 

Though  veneration  for  the  original  chirography  of 
great  men,  and  of  important  works,  is  probably  to  be 
reckoned  a  modern  sentiment  (at  least  in  the  intensity 
in  which  it  exists  among  us),  yet  it  would  seem  to  have 
so  much  connexion  with  essential  habits  of  the  human 
mind,  that,  ait  least  in  so  strong  a  case  as  that  of  a  docu- 
ment nearly  a  thousand  years  old,  of  such  a  character, 
and  from  such  a  hand,  as  that  of  the  Law  of  Moses,  it 
could  hardly  fail  to  be  awakened.  If  awakened,  it 
would  seem  that  it  could  scarcely  fail  to  be  in  some 
way  manifested  in  the  history,  if  the  original  volume 
was  in  existence  at  the  time  of  Nebuchadnezzar's 
inroad,  or  of  Ezra's  return.  Yet  on  neither  of  these 
occasions  is  there  any  allusion  of  the  kind,  though  a 
somewhat  precise  detail  is  given  of  the  spoils  carried 

for  example,  Genesis  xxxvi.  31  et  seq.,  where  the  Hebrew  and  Samaritan 
copies  read  alike. 


III.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  61 

* 

away  by  the  Babylonian  general  from  the  pillage  of  the 
Temple.* 

We  could  better  estimate  the  probabilities  of  the 
case,  if  we  knew  the  materials,  upon  and  with  which  the 
original  law  was  written.  The '  writings  found  on  the 
linen  envelopes  of  the  Egyptian  mummies,  make  it 
probable  that  this  frail  material  was  in  common  use  for 
writing  in  that  country,  whence  it  is  to  be  presumed 
that  Moses  would  adopt  it.t     Excluded  from  the  ^r, 

*  2  Kings  XXV.  13-16. —  Had  Moses'  autograph  been  in  Ezra's  hands, 
and  been  replaced  by  him  in  the  sanctuary,  we  know  of  nothing,  provided 
the  materials  were  sufficiently  durable,  to  prevent  its  remaining  securely 
there  till  the  time  of  Antiochus  Epiphanes,  (A.  C.  170.)  Had  that  mon- 
arch added  its  destruction  or  deportation  to  his  other  outrages,  we  could 
hardly  have  failed  to  read  of  it  in  the  proper  place  (1  Mac.  i.  20-28; 
2  Mac.  V.  15,  16.) ;  for,  at  least  in  the  time  of  the  Asmonaean  brothers,  the 
reverence  for  the  volume  would  have  been  at  its  height  Had  it  escaped 
violence  at  his  hand,  by  a  concealment,  to  which  it  might  be  supposed  tlie 
first  alarm  of  his  intentions  would  have  prompted,  we  know  of  nothing  to 
endanger  it  till  the  destruction  of  the  second  temple  by  Titus.  The  Tem- 
ple copy  of  the  Law  figured  at  Rome  in  Titus'  triumphal  procession. 

trt^A KO.)   Xu^'i'^   Xi""'' «,   Tl  li/MS   0  rSi  'ItvSaiur  Stri   Toiraii 

i<pi^Tt  T«>  Xtupifuf  TiXivreuBi.  Josephus  de  Bello  Judaico,  lib.  7,  cap.  5, 
§  5.     Titus  afterwards  gave  it  to  the  historian  at  his  request.     A'rvfiy 

\*auiii.tii  TTrot,  xttt  (iiSxiat*  ii^air  tXaSat  ;^a^<0'a/Uf>av  Tirav.       Idem,  de  Vita  Sua, 

§  75.  Josephus  could  not  have  omitted  to  intimate  his  good  fortune,  had 
he  understood  himself  to  be  the  possessor  of  the  original  writing  of 
Moses. 

f  Eichhom  (Einleitung  ins  A.  T.  §  63,)  ascribes  the  invention  of  the 
art  of  preparing  hides  for  writing,  to  so  late  an  age  as  that  of  one  of  tlie 
Attali,  in  the  second  or  third  century  before  Christ  I  know  not  on  what 
authority  this  is  done.  It  is  probably  an  inference  from  the  Latin  name 
for  parchment,  ("  charta  Pergamena,")  Pergamus  having  been  the  capital 
city  of  that  dynasty.  Eichhom  inaccurately  represents  Pliny  as  saying, 
(Hist  Nat  lib.  13,  cap.  11,)  that  he  found  traces,  in  old  authors,  of  the  use 
of  linen  for  writing  before  the  Trojan  war.  The  same  critic  argues  from 
Jeremiah  xxxvi.  23,  that  the  book  there  ordered  to  be  burned  in  the  mon- 
arch's own  presence  could  not  have  been  of  parchment,  on  account  of  the 
offensive  stench,  which  that  substance  would  emit.  But,  if  this  might  be 
positively  inferred,  it  would  be  unsafe  reasoning  from  the  practices  of  the 
age  of  Jehoiakim  to  those  of  the  age  of  Moses,  and  from  the  writings  of 
Jeremiah  to  writings  of  the  different  character  which  belonged  to  the  Law. 


52  TEXT  OF  THE  [  LEGT. 

as  in  sarcophagi,  it  might  be  preserved  through  a  course 
of  ages  ;  but  a  book  of  that  material,  subject  to  any 
frequent  use,  could  not  be  otherwise  than  short-lived.* 

Did  any  standard  copy  of  the  Pentateuch,  whether 
the  law -giver's  autdgraph  or  not,  having  been  preserved 
in  the  sacred  precincts  till  the  time  of  Nebuzaradan's 
invasion,  come,  after  the  return  from  the  captivity,  into 
Ezra's  hands  ?  I  haye  not  found  that  there  is  so  much 
as  any  Jewish  tradition  of^  later  times,  asserting  such  a 
fact ;  though,  even  without  foundation,  no  story  would 
$eem  more  likely  to  obtain  currency,  than  one  to  this 
effect  There  is  a  relation,t  that  Jeremiah,  at  the  cap- 
tivity, hid  the  tabernacle,  with  the  ark  and  the  altar  of 
incense,  in  a  cave ;  but  nothing  is  said  of  any  copy  of 
the  national  code.  And,  on  the  contrary,  there  are  plain 
signs  of  a  tradition,  that  the  Temple  copy  was  destroyed 
at  the  burning  of  that  edifice ;  J  a  tradition,  which, 
whether  correct  or  not  in  its  main  statement,  appears  to 
show,  that  no  accredited  account  had  been  handed 
down  of  the  preservation  of  any  such  copy.  In  a  letter 
represented  to  have  been  written  by  the  Jews  of  Pales- 
tine to  those  of  Egypt,  (B.  C.  144,)  Nehemiah  is  said^ 
to  have  founded  a  library  in  the  Temple.  It  might  be 
supposed  that  so  venerable  a  relic,  as  the  ancient 
.authorized  copy  of  the  Law,  had  it  existed,  would  have 

*  Eichhorn  states  that  Pliny,  (lib.  13,  cap.  12,  §  26,)  and  Aulus  Gellius, 
(lib.  2,  cap.  3,)  speak  of  two  hundred  years  as  the  greatest  age  of  a 
manuscript,  in  moderate  use,  in  their  time ;  and  he  argues,  that  the  du- 
ration of  books  must  have  been  less  in  earlier  ages,  while  the  arts  of 
preparing  materials  to  write  with  and  upon,  were  in  a  yet  more  immature 
state.  (Einleitung,  §  87.)  But  I  do  not  find  the  passage  in  Aulus  Gellius ; 
and,  as  Pliny  merely  says  that  he  has  seen  papyrus  manuscripts  nearly 
two  hundred  years  old,  without  implying  how  much  longer  they  might 
last,  his  testimony  is  not  much  to  the  point. 

t  2  Maccabees  ii.  5. 

X  Augustin.  de  Mirabilibus,  lib.  2,  (Vol.iii.  col.  751,  ed.  Basil.)  "Esdras, 
Dei  sacerdos,  comhustam  a  Chalda;is  in  archivis  templi  restituit  legem." 

§  2  Maccabees  ii.  13. 


^* 


III.]  OLD   TESTAMENT.  53 

made  the  basis  of  such  a  collection ;  but  no  hint  of  that 
nature  is  given. 

It  is  accordingly  to  be  viewed  as  probable,  that  th6 
copies  which  came  ihto  use  in  Judea  after  the  captivity, 
were  such  as  had  remained  in  private  hands.  That 
such  copies  had  in  fact  been  made,  which  I  have  argued 
above  *  to  be  likely,  even  as  to  the  earliest  age,  appears 
to  be  rendered  scarcely  less  than  certain,  in  respect  to 
the  later  times  of  the  monarchy,  by  the  relation  of  Je- 
hoshaphat's  mission  of  a  number  of  Levites  and  priests 
to  teach  the  people,  "  throughout  all  the  cities  of  Judah," 
having  "  the  book  of  the  law  of  the  Lord  with  them."  f 

In  the  mean  time,  what  had  been  the  history  of  the 
numerous  other  books,  still  extant,  understood  to  be 
composed  between  Moses'  time  and  that  of  Ezra?  In 
the  book  of  Joshua  we  read  J  of  his  having  annexed'  a 
writing  of  his  to  "  the  book  of  the  law  of  the  Lord ; " 
and  Samuel  is  said  to  have  written  what  we  should 
call  the  Constitution  of  the  kingdom,  about  to  be  estab- 
lished, "in  a  book,  and  laid  it  up  before  the  Lord."^ 
Was  the  same  disposition  made  of  other  books,  now 
existing  in  our  Old  Testament  collection?  This  is 
commonly  supposed,  but  it  is  an  opinion  entertained 
without  evidence.  II     On  the  other  hand^  that  before  the 

*  Page  44.  f  2  Chron.  xvii.  9.     Compare,  also,  2  Cbron.  xix.  5. 

I  xxiv.  26.  §  1  Samuel  x.  25. 

II  Such  writers  as  Dr.  Gray  are  in  the  habit  of  asserting  this  as  a  thing 
indubitable,  and  even  of  going  into  some  detail  in  the  groundless  allega- 
tion. "  To  the  same  sanctuary  were  consigned,  as  they  were  successively 
produced,  all  those  historical  and  prophetical  books,  which  were  written 
from  the  time  of  Joshua  to  that  of  David,  including  their  own  works. 
Solomon  liaving  afterwards  erected  a  temple  to  the  honor  of  God,  ap- 
pointed that  in  future  the  sacred  books  should  he  deposited  in  this  holy 
receptacle,  and  enriched  the  collections  by  the  inspired  productions  of  his 
own  pen."  Gray's  "  Key  to  the  Old  Testament,"  page  4.  Such  state- 
ments as  I  have  italicized,  given  as  history,  one  can  only  read  with  amaze- 
ment. —  See  also  Home's  Introduction,  Part  3,  book  1,  chap.  1,  §  4.  Even 


tT- 


54  TEXT  OF  THE  [LECT. 

captivity,  there  had  been  made,  in  the  Temple,  a  collec- 
tion of  books,  is  a  supposition  favored  by  some  circum- 
stances of  probability.  The  fact  of  such  a  collection 
subsequently  to  that  event,  cannpt  be  doubted,*  and  it 
is  not  unnatural  to  view  it  as  a  renewal  of  an  earlier 
existing  institution.  What,  in  that  case,  the  older  library 
contained,  we  have,  in  the  absence  of  all  records  con- 
cerning it,  no  means  of  determining ;  but  there  seems  no 
room  for  doubt,  that,  had  it  survived  the  ruin  of  the  city 
and  Temple,  it  would  have  been  much  richer  than  the 
collection  which  has  reached  us,  preserving,  among 
others,  for  the  later  ages,  some  of  those  now  lost  books, 
to  which  numerous  references  are  found  in  books  of  our 
Canon.!  In  any  event,  all  reasons  which  appear  to 
justify  the  supposition,  that  the  books  of  Moses  came 
into  the  possession  of  Ezra  and  his  contemporaries 
through  private  hands,  lead  to  the  same  conclusion 
respecting  the  works  of  later  writers.  And  that  copies 
of  these  works  were  in  circulation,  we  may  find  the 
more  cause  to  allow,  when  we  come  to  observe  instan- 
ces, in  which  the  prophetical  writers  have  manifested«^ 
acquaintance  with  one  another,  and  even  borrowed  from 
one  another,  or  from  a  common  source.  J 

But,  to  go  a  step  further  back,  were  these  composi- 
tions, all,  or  any  of  them,  edited  by  their  authors  ?  I  use 
a  modern  expression ;  but  it  4s  one,  answering  to  a  sense, 

Simon  takes  for  granted  the  existence  of  a  Temple  library  previous  to  the 
captivity.  "  En  qualit6  d'orateurs  publics,  Us  (les  Prophetes)  haranguoient 
en  presence  dii  peuple  selon  les  besoins  de  l'6tat ;  Us  pr6disoient  les  maux 
dont  U  6tait  menac6,  &c.  Ces  harangues  ou  proph6ties  6toient  enr6gistr6e8 
et  conserv6es  dans  les  archives."   Histoire  Critique  du  V.  T.,  liv.  1,  chap.  4. 

*  See  Josephus,  Antiquitates,  lib.  3,  cap.  1,  §  7;  lib.  5,  cap.  1,  §  17. 

f  " The  book  of  Jasher,"  for  instance,  Josh.  x.  13;  "the  book  of  the 
Wars  of  the  Lord,"  Numb.  xxi.  14 ;  « the  book  of  Nathan,"  2  Chron. 
ix.  29 ;  and  many  others.  —  Comp.  1  Kings  iv.  31  -  33. 

f  Compare  Isaiah  ii.  2-4,  with  Micah  iv.  1-3;  Isaiah  xv.  xvi.  with 
Jeremiah  xlvui ;  Obadiah  3  et  seq.  with  Jeremiah  xlix.  7  - 17. 


III.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  55 

which  has  no  peculiar  reference  to  modern  times.  If 
some  of  such  compositions  were  published  under  their 
authors'  oversight,  which  were  they  ?  and  who  super- 
intended the  publication  of  the  rest  ?  That  these  are 
important  questions,  every  one  will  own,  who  reflects, 
for  a  moment,  how  materially  different  will  be  his  inter- 
pretation, according  as  he  understands  the  heading  of  a 
Psalm,  fdr  example,  which  professes  to  give  an  account 
of  the  date  and  occasion  of  its  composition,  to  have  pro- 
ceeded from  the  writer,  or  from  some  irresponsible 
copyist.  This  hint,  alone,  is  in  place  at  present.  The 
developement  of  its  relations  belongs  to  a  later  stage 
of  our  inquiries. 

Concerning  the  condition  of  the  text,  possessed  by 
Ezra,  in  respect  to  purity,  we  have  no  historical  infor- 
mation. But  there  are  readings,  the  corrupt  character 
of  which  can  scarcely  be  doubted,  and  which,  at  the 
same  time,  the  Hebrew  copies  and  the  ancient  versions 
concur  substantially  in  exhibitmg.  The  origin  of  such 
corruptions  is  naturally  referred  to  a  time,  before  ver- 
sions began  to  be  made;  and  as  the  erroneous  read- 
ings are  such  in  number  and  extent,  that  the  interval 
between  Ezra  and  the  earliest  version  (which,  it  will 
be  remembered,  was  only  from  two  to  three  hundred 
years)  does  not  appear  sufficient  to  have  produced  them 
in  the  usual  manner,  we  are  led  to  the  conclusion  that 
they  had  already  established  themselves  in  the  copies 
antecedent  to  the  captivity.* 

It  is  to  be  presumed,  that,  after  the  return  to  Pales- 
tine, copies  of  the  old  books  came  into  active  circula- 
tion ;  for  the  Jews,  from  Solomon's  time,  had  enjoyed  a 
considerable  degree  of  culture,  and  their  actual  condi- 

•  Also,  compare  different  copies  of  the  same  composition,  in  the  Hebrew 
text ;  as  Psalm  xiv.  with  Psalm  liii. ;  Psalm  xl.  14  et  seq.  with  Ixx. ;  xviii. 
with  2  Samuel  xxii. 


56i  TKXT  OF  THE  [LECT. 

tion  could  not  have  failed  ,to  inspire  a  lively  interest  in 
their  ancient  records.  Further;  the  multiplication  of 
transcripts  of  the  Law  was  necessary,  as,  from  this 
period,  lessons  from  it  were  read  in  the  Sabbath  service 
of  the  synagogues  scattered  through  the  country.*  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  not  likely,  that  the  more  ancient 
copies,  which  had  come  into  the  hands  of  Ezra's  con- 
temporaries, were  l6ng  preserved.  The  practice  of 
making  notes  in  the  margin  of  old  books,  thus  over- 
loading and  incumbering  •  the  page,  would  make  it  con- 
venient to  supersede  them,  from  time  to  time,  by  new 
copies,  in  which,  all  that  it  was  thought  fit  to  preserve, 
should  be  fairly  written  out ;  and  still  more,  the  old 
books  were  written  in  a  character,  which,  if  the  current 
opinion  be  well  founded,  was  now  disused,  and  proba- 
bly before  long  became  illegible  to  any  but  the  learned. 
From  the  Alexandrine  version  we  learn  a  few  inter- 
esting facts,  respecting  the  condition  of  the  Hebrew 
text  in  the  third  century  before  our  era.  The  copies 
which  served  for  the  original  of  that  version  were  al- 
ready furnished  with  some  midraschim^  or  comments 
of  an  allegorical  character.!  The  breaking  up  of  the 
written  text  into  separate  words  had  not  yet  been  ar- 
ranged, at  least  in  any  uniform  manner. J  The  division 
into  verses  of  any  kind  was  a  device  yet  unknown,^  and 
figures  were  not  always  written  out  in  words,  but  often 
expressed  by  the  numerical  power  of  single  letters. || 

*  See  Prideaux's  "  Connexion,"  &c.,  Part  i.,  book  1,  year  444. 

t  This  appe&rs,  for  example,  from  the  Greek  readings  of  Judges  viii.  30, 
and  1  Sam,  vi.  20.    See  Patrick's  Commentary  ad  loc. 

\  E.  g.  Jeremiah  xxiii.  33.  The  Hebrew  text  reads ;  XB^r^TlDTlN ; 
where  the  Septuagint  has ;  v/iiis  itrt  ri  Xtifi/ta,  answering  to  Ntywri  CDPlX. 
Numerous  references  of  this  kind  might  be  given. 

§  Compare,  e.  g.  the  Septuagint  and  Hebrew  of  Psalm  xlv.  (Sept.  xliv.) 
12,  13.  The  marks,  separating  verses  on  the  present  Hebrew  page, 
make  part  of  the  Masoretic  system. 

II  Compare  the  Septuagint  and  Hebrew  of  2  Sam.  xxiv.  13.     The 


Ill]  OLD-  TESTAMENT.  57 

The  Alexandrine  version  came  into  general  use 
among  the  Jews,  not  only  of  Egypt,  but  of  Palestine ;  * 
and  it  has  been  suspected  (without  sufficient  reason, 
that  I  can  find),  that,  in  consequence,  their  attention 
was  withdrawn  for  a  time  from  the  Hebrew  original.  It 
was  almost  necessary,  that,  after  the  Christian  revelation, 
translations  should  be  referred  to  by  them  in  their 
controversies  with  the  Christian  writers,  few  of  whom 
had  any  acquaintance  with  Hebrew.  But  both  parties 
became  dissatisfied  with  a  witness,  which  did  not 
sufficiently  answer,  throughout,  the  views  of  either; 
and  this  circumstance  appears  to  have  given  rise  to  the 
other  Greek  versions  of  the  period,  made  partly  by 
Christians,  and  partly  by  Jews. 

The  principal  of  these  versions  were  the  works  of 
Aquila,  Symmachus,  Theodotion,  and  three  anonymous 
authors.  Parts  of  them  remain,  dispersed  in  the  works 
of  different  ecclesiastical  writers,  and  especially  surviving 
in  the  extant  fragments  t   of  the  Hexapla  of  Origen. 

latter  reads  "  seven  years  of*famine  "  ;  the  former,  "  three  years."  y^Vf 
seven,  would  hardly  be  mistaken  for  ^h^,  three.  But  the  letters  having 
respectively  these  numerical  powers,  l  and  J,  are  similar.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  appears  that  numbers  were  sometimes  expressed  in  words.  In 
Nehemiah  v.  11,  the  Hebrew  text  reads  f]i3|n  nX5,  the  ^*hundredthof  the 
money  " ;  the  Septuagint,  ««•«  v»v  a^yv^Uu,  "  from  the  money."  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  Greek  translators  had  the  whole  of  the  first  word  on 
their  Hebrew  page,  and  read  it  as  nX!5. 

*  Philo  made  it  the  ground  of  his  comments.  Whether  Josephus  made 
it  his  authority,  has  been  disputed  of  late  :  but  further  examination  has 
confirmed  the  commonly  received  opinion.  The  estimation  in  which  he 
held  it,  is  proved  by  his  repetition  of  the  fable  concerning  its  origin.  (Antiq. 
Lib.  12,  cap.  2,  §  10- 14.)  The  New  Testament  writers  not  only  quote  from 
it  for  the  most  part,  but  tlieir  style  is  formed  upon  its  model.  Tertullian 
(Apologeticus,  cap.  18,)  says  that  it  was  even  read  in  the  Jewish  Syna- 
gogues. Sec  also  Buxtorf's  "Lexicon  Talmudicum,"  ad  verb.  priQr-?X, 
and  Justin  Martyr,  Dialogus  cum  Tryphone,  §  72;  Cohortatio  ad  Gr©- 
cos,  §  13. 

f  Morin,  in  1587,  made  the  first  collection  of  these  fragments.  Drusius 
(1622)  and  Martianay  (1699)  followed  in  the  same  work-     The  edition 

VOL.    I.  8 


58  TEXT  OF  THE  [LECT. 

The  Hex^pla,  dating  from  about  the  year  230  of  our 
era,  was  the  fruit  of  what  may  be  called  the  first  critical 
labors  expended  by  Christians  upon  the  Old  Testament. 
It  exhibited  the  Hebrew,  with  the  Septuagint  and  the 
other  Greek  versions  which  have  been  specified,  in 
parallel  columns.  But  its  chief  object  was  to  settle  the 
text  of  the  Septuagint;  and  accordingly  its  usefulness 
to  us,  in  respect  to  the  Hebrew  original,  would,  even  if 
we  possessed  it  entire,  be  less  than  might,  at  first  view, 
be  supposed.  Through  Jerome,  however,  who  con- 
sulted it  in  its  complete  state,  some  single  valuable  facts, 
relating  to  its  readings,  are  collected. 

Between  Origen's  time  and  the  sixth  century,  some 
results  of  critical  attention,  on  the  part  of  the  Jews,  to 
their  sacred  writings,  begin  to  appear.  The  Talmuds 
give  rules  for  the  observance  of  copyists,*  particularly 
in  the  way  of  caution  against  the  mutual  substitution  of 
similar  letters.  They  speak  of  comparisons  of  different 
Hebrew  manuscripts,  mentioning  a  few  instances  of 
disagreement  in  their  readings.  They  refer  to  fifteen 
instances  of  those  puncta  extraordinaria  (extraordinary 
marks)  which  we  find  ia  many  places  in  our  existing 
editions.  And  they  present  specimens  of  those  com- 
ments in  the  way  of  emendation,  and  of  directions  to 
the  reader  and  writer,  which  aft-erwards  became  so 
numerous  in  the  Masora.t  In  this  interval,  we  find  the 
first  traces  of  a  separation  of  verses  and  words  in  writ- 
ing, t     The  divisions,  called  Paraschioth  and  Haphta- 

most  in  use  is  that  of  Montfaucon,  in  1714.  There  have  been  considera- 
ble later  detached  contributions. 

*  For  specimens  of  these,  see  De  Wette's  "Lehrbuch  der  HisL 
Kritisch.  Einleit  ins  A.  T."  §  89. 

f  For  particulars,  see  the  same,  and  Jahn  "  Introductio  in  Libros  V.  F." 
§107. 

X  Jerome,  in  commenting  on  Zac.  xi.  11,  explains  the  peculiar  Septua- 
gint version  of  that  verse,  by  saying  that  its  authors  combined  two  words 


III.]  OLD   TESTAMENT.  59 

rolh*  are  necessarily  referred,  by  their  occasion  and  use, 
the  former  to  a  time  as  early  as  that  of  the  institution  of 
synagogues,  the  latter  to  the  agie  of  the  Syrian  persecu- 
tion in  the  second  century  before  Christ,  the  period  of 
the  introduction  of  a  public  reading  of  the  prophets. 

To  the  Talmudists  succeeded  the  Masorites,  who 
elaborated,  and  (with  some  exceptions,  for  the  most 
part  not  material,)  completed  the  Jewish  critical  appara- 
tus, which  has  come  down  to  our  day.  They  devised, 
or  at  least  matured  the  complicated  system  of  vowel 
notation,  and  affixed  the  vowel  points,  with  the  others, 
called  diacritical,  and  the  accents.  They  commented 
upon  the  text,  at  large,,  in  notes  critical,  grammatical,  and 
exegetical.  They  counted  the  verses,  the  words,  and 
the  letters  of  each  book ;  they  ascertained  the  middle 
verse,  word,  and  letter  of  each ;  and  recorded  these 
observations.  They  remarked  the  verses  containing  the 
whole,  or  certain  portions  of  the  letters  of  the  alphabet. 
They  designated  letters  written  larger  or  smaller  than 
the  common  size,  inverted  and  suspended  letters,  final 
letters  occurring  in  the  midst  of  a  word,  and  letters  with 
the  medial  form,  occurring  at  the  end.f  These  fruits  of 
their  laborious  industry,  having  announced  them  first  to 
their  pupils  in  lectures,!  they  embodied  in  what  is  called 
the  "Greater  Masora."  Of  this  the  "Little  Masora"  is 
an  abridgment.  The  period  commonly  assigned  to 
these  labors,  (though  the  taste  for  them,  and  the  pursuit 

into  one ;  "  illi  duo  verba  in  unum  copulantes."  But  it  might  admit  a 
doubt,  whether  it  was  by  inspection  of  his  page,  or  simply  on  grounds  of 
interpretation,  that  he  regarded  the  letters  as  making  two  words. 

*  These  nrti'13  [divisions)  and  nntp^n  {dismissiojis)  are  the  tech- 
nical names  of  reading  lessons  in  the  Law  and  the  Prophets  respectively. 
Both  are  in  number  fifty-two,  or  otherwise  fifty-four,  the  latter  arrange- 
ment having  reference  to  intercalary  years. 

t  For  a  minute  account  of  these  labors  of  theirs,  see  Buxtorf 's  "  Ti- 
berias," cap.  12-16. 

I  Buxtorfii  Tiberias,  cap.  3,  p.  9. 


60  TEXT  OF  THB  [LECT. 

of  them,  began  earlier,  as  we  have  seen,  and  continued 
to  later  times,)  is  that  from  the  sixth  centmy  to  the  tenth. 
Their  scene  was  the  Jewish  schools  in  Babylon  and 
Pales.tine,  particularly  that  of  Tiberias  in  the  latter 
country. 

From  the  Masorites  we  have  received  our  -Hebrew 
Bible.  Eai'ly  in  the  eleventh  century,  a  collation  of  the 
eastern  or  Babylonish  manuscripts,  with  those  of  the 
wiest,  or  Palestine,  conducted  by  Jacob  Ben  Naphtali,  of 
the  former  school,  and  Aaron  Ben  Asher  of  the  latter,* 
exhibited,  as  the  result  of  the  comparison,  eight  hun- 
dred and  sixty-four  various  readings,  all  relating  to  the 
vowel  points  and  accents,  with  the  exception  of  one,t 
which  presents  a  question  respecting  a  division  of  words. 
Our  editions,  for  the  most  part,  follow  that  of  Ben  Asher. 
The  critics  of  that  age  had  such  estimation  with  their 
countrymen,  that  the  copies  sent  out  under  their  patron- 
age superseded  all  others  of  earUer  origin ;  and,  at  the 
present  day,  there  is  not  extant  a  single  Hebrew  man- 
uscript, which  can  be  confidently  held  to  be  older  than 
the  eleventh  century. 

The  actual  existence  of  various  readings  in  the 
Masoretic  manuscripts,  denied  for  a  time,  but  abun- 
dantly proved  in  the  collations  of  Kennicott,  De  Rossi, 
and  others,  shows  that  the  Masoretic  apparatus  did  not 
absolutely  secure  the  text,  as  there  was  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  it  would,  against  all  further  chance  of  alter- 

•  There  was  an  earlier  list  of  various  readings,  two  hundred  and  twenty 
in  number,  exhibited  in  a  comparison  of  the  same  two  classes  of  authori- 
ties. It  has  been  differently  referred  to  the  seventh  and  eighth  centuries, 
and  even  to  an  earlier  time,  see  De  Wette's  "  Lehrbuch  "  &c.  §  92.  But 
its  date  cannot  be  ascertained.  All  the  various  readings  relate  to  conso- 
nants, except  two,  which  have  reference  to  the  point  Mappik ;  a  circum- 
stance, which  strongly  marks  it  for  the  essay  of  an  age  prior  to  the  vowel 
punctuation. 

t  Canticles  viii.  6,  n^O^O"?^,  oUas  n;  nsp'?^. 


III.]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  61 

ation.  Comparatively  speaking,  however,  these  modern 
various  readings  are  lew  and  inconsiderable.  They 
appear  to  have  had  their  source  chiefly  in  a  fastidious 
desire  of  grammatical  correctness,  after  the  grammar 
of  the  language  came  to  be  a  subject  of  attention  in  the 
Spanish  schools,  and  in  occasional  conformities  to  the 
Chaldee  paraphrases,  which  had  long  ago  taken  the 
place  of  the  Greek  Alexandrine  version  in  the  common 
use  of  the  dispersed  Jewish  families. 

The  first  printed  edition  of  any  part  of  the  Bible 
was  one  of  the  Psalms,  with  the  commentary  of  Rabbi 
Kimchi,  issued  at  Bologna,  as  is  believed,  in  1 477.  The 
first  edition  of  the  whole  Bible  was  pubUshed  at  Soncino, 
in  1488,  and  was  the  basis  of  that  of  Brescia,  in  1494. 
The  second  independent  edition  was  that  of  the  Com- 
plutensian  Polyglott,  executed  under  the  patronage  of 
Cardinal  Ximenes,  at  Alcala  in  Spain,  between  the  years 
1502  and  1517.  A  third  was  issued  by  the  Bombergs, 
at  Venice,  in  1518,  and  a  revision  of  the  same,  under 
the  care  of  Jacob  Ben  Chaim,  eight  years  later.* 
These  three  editions,  particularly  the  last,  make  the 
main  sources  of  all  that  have  followed.  Joseph  Athias 
availed  himself  of  manuscript  authorities  to  some  ex- 
tent, in  preparing  the  Amsterdam  edition  of  1661.  That 
of  Vander  Hooght,  containing  some  various  readings, 
followed  in  1705.  Michaelis,  for  his  edition  of  1720, 
collated  five  manuscripts  and  nineteen  editions.  The 
splendid  edition  of  Houbigant  (a  priest  of  the  Oratory 
at  Paris),  in  1753,  scarcely  justified  its  pretensions  to 
a  critical  character.  It  exhibited  the  unpointed  Hebrew 
text,  following  the  readings  of  Vander  Hooght,  without 

*  Bomberg's  edition  first  exhibited  the  existing  division  into  chapters. 
Though  adopted  by  the  Jews,  it  was  of  Christian  origin,  being  arranged 
in  the  twelfth  century,  by  the  Cardinal  Hugo  di  Santo  Caro,  in  order  to 
the  construction  of  a  Concordance  of  the  Vulgate. 


62  TEXT  OF   THE  [LECT- 

other  emendations  than  those  of  typographical  errors. 
It  was  accompanied  with  a  Latin  version,  and  with  rari- 
ous  readings  in  the  margin,  from  the  Samaritan  Penta- 
teuch, expressed  in  the  square  Hebrew  letter. 

Properly  speaking,  the  modern  textual  criticism  of  the 
Old  Testament  began  with  Kennicott,  the  first  volume* 
of  whose  great  work  was  printed  in  foUo  at  the  Clar- 
endon Press,  Oxford,  in  1 776.1  Before  his  time,  there 
had  been  a  superstitious  belief  in  the  absence  of  all 
various  readings,  of  any  consideration,  from  the  Masor- 
etic  manuscripts.  Buxtorf  had  even  asserted  their  abso- 
lute uniformity,  and  Capellus  had  not  ventured  to  deny 
it ;  and  the  urgency  of  the  Protestant  divines  to  main- 
tain the  verbal  exactness  of  the  copies  of  the  scriptures, 
in  the  original  tongues,  against  the  Catholic  assumptions 
for  the  Vulgate,  had  contributed  to  maintain  the  belief. 
In  part  by  the  aid  of  other  scholars,  Kennicott  collated 
for  his  edition,  more  than  •  six  hundred  manuscripts, 
besides  fifty  previous  editions.  Fifty -one  of  his  man- 
uscripts he  reckoned  to  be  from  six  to  eight  hun- 
dred years  old ;  to  one  hundred  and  seventy -four  he 
ascribed  an  age  of  from  four  to  six  hundred  years ;  and 
the  rest  he  esteemed  more  modern.  Kennicott's  text 
is  that  of  Vander  Hooght,  with  a  chain  of  various  read- 
ings from  the  Hebrew  manuscripts  and  the  Samaritan 
Pentateuch. 

The  more  extended  collations  of  De  Rossi,  of  Parma, 

*  Containing  the  Pentateuch,  Joshua,  Judges,  and  the  books  of 
Samuel. 

t  "  Opus  magnum,  multoties  annunciatum,  avide  expectatum,  magnis 
curis  vigiliisque  et  multis  impensis  accuratum,  qui  et  antequam  publicum 
in  conspectum  prodiit,  sub  censuram  vocatum,  accusatum,  defensum,  ad 
nostras  pervenit  manus,  baud  levi  sere  comparatum."  Masch's  edition  of 
Le  Long's  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  Part.  i.  cap.  1,  sect.  1,  §  42.  This  work  gives 
full  descriptions  of  all  the  printed  editions  of  the  Hebrew  Bible,  down  to 
the  year  178a 


m.]  OLD   TESTAMENT.  63 

followed.  In  the  preparation  of  his  work,  issued  in 
1784-8,  he  examined  no  less  than  three  hundred  edi- 
tions, and  seven  hundred  and  thirty  manuscripts.  Some 
of  these  latter  he  supposed  himself  authorized  to  refer 
to  so  remote  a  period  as  the  seventh  or  eighth  century  ; 
a  conclusion  which  has  not  been  commonly  acquiesced 
in  by  the  learned. — But  this  specification  cannot  be 
further  pursued.  The  convenient  edition  of  Doeder- 
lein  and  Meisner,  published  at  Leipsic,  in  1793,  has 
had  an  extensive  circulation.  That  of  Jahn*  contains 
a  selection  of  various  readings,  but  is  chiefly  recom- 
mended by  its  convenient  arrangement  of  parallel  pas- 
sages in  the  historical  books.  The  manual  edition  of 
Augustus  Hahn,  issued  at  Leipsic  in  1831,  distinguished 
for  the  beauty  of  its  page,  as  well  as  the  general  correct- 
ness of  its  typographical  execution,  has  come  into  com- 
mon use  in  this  country. 

The  account  which  I  have  given  of  the  history  of  the 
Text,  is  but  a  rapid  and  condensed  outline  ;  but  it  may 
serve  for  the  basis  of  more  particular  remarks,  as  oc- 
casion will  hereafter  occur  for  such.  We  have  seen 
occasion  to  allow,  that,  in  the  later  ages,  the  Jews  have 
given  a  remarkably  minute  attention  to  the  preservation 
of  the  integrity  of  their  sacred  books ;  while,  in  the 
earlier  times,  we  have  found  no  proof  that  the  natural 
causes  of  error  on  the  part  of  copyists  were  in  any  way 
precluded  from  their  usual  operation ;  and  have  seen  that 
both  the  occasional  difference  between  the  different 
early  authorities,  and  phenomena,  which  cannot  be  mis- 
taken, of  the  Hebrew  text  itself,  indicate  that  errors 
in  transcription  did  in  fact  occur. 

•  John  Jahn,  author  of  the  "Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament," 
"  History  of  tlie  Hebrew  Commonwealth,"  "  Archteologia  Biblica,"  and 
other  works.  His  Hebrew  Bible  was  published  at  Vienna,  in  two  volumes, 
in  1807. 


64  TEXT  OF  THE  [LECT. 

The  forming  of  a  critical  text  of  the  Old  Testament, 
after  the  accurate  type  of  the  critical  text  of  the 
New,  as  prepared  by  Griesbach  and  others,  is  now  an 
impossible  work ;  inasmuch  as,  our  Hebrew  manuscripts 
being  of  Masoretic  origin,  there  are  many  readings  pre- 
served in  the  older  authorities,  (the  ancient  versions,  for 
example,)  which  no  longer  exist  anywhere  in  Hebrew, 
and  accordingly,  to  replace  them  in  the  text,  they  would 
need  to  be  translated  by  the  modern  scholar  into  that 
language,  a  course  which  wodd  obviously  transgress  all 
authorized  bounds  of  critical  discretion.  But,  though 
the  preparation  of  such  a  satisfactory  text,  extending  to 
the  whole  body  of  the  sacred  records,  must  needs  be 
despaired  of,  a  cautious  interpreter,  is  bound  to  forsake 
the  Masoretic  reading  of  any  passage,  wherever  he  sees 
reason  to  believe,  that,  from  other  sources,  a  better  read- 
ing (that  is,  having  more  probability  of  being  original 
and  genuine,)  may  be  supplied.  —  I  close  this  lecture 
with  a  brief  reference  to  a  few  of  these  sources,  simply 
exhibiting  them,  for  our  future  convenience'. sake,  in  one 
view,  and  avoiding  for  the  present  all  those  questions, 
(extending  themselves  over  a  wide  range  of  inquiry, 
and  necessarily  leading  to  much  difference  of  opinion,) 
which  relate  to  their  respective  claims  as  arbiters  of 
controverted  readings. 

The  Samaritan  Pentateuch,  notwithstanding  the  dis- 
putes concerning  its  date,  the  manner  and  occasion  of 
its  origin,  and  its  more  recent  fortunes,  is  allowed  on  all 
hands  to  be  of  great  antiquity,  and  is  entitled  to  special 
consideration.  The  ancient  Samaritan  version  affords 
no  independent  authority,  as  it  was  made  from  this  text, 
which  it  follows  with  a  servilely  literal  imitation. 

The  worth  of  the  Alexandrine  Greek  version  as  a  tex- 
tual authority,  has  likewise  been  the  subject  of  much  dis- 
cussion.    Its  correspondence  with  the  Samaritan  text  in 


III.  ]  OLD  TESTAMENT.  65 

the  Pentateuch  is  a  fact  of  the  most  striking  and  weighty 
character.  Could  we  be  sure  that  it  exactly  or  essen- 
tially represented,  in  Greek,  the  sense  exhibited  in  He- 
brew copies  existing  at  the  time  when  it  was  made,  it 
would  be  an  evidence,  from  its  greater  antiquity,  far  out- 
weighing, in  cases  of  difference,  any  now  extant  Hebrew 
manuscripts.  But  the  degree  of  attention  and  skill, 
with  which  its  diiferent  parts  were  prepared,  has  been 
matter  of  disagreement ;  its  own  original  text  (since 
that,  too,  as  much  as  the  Hebrew,  has  been  exposed  to 
all  the  chances  of  time,)  is  itself  a  subject  for  critical 
inquiry ;  and  it  has  been  cliarged,  in  different  quarters, 
with  having  sustained  designed  corruptions,  at  different 
eras,  for  the  purpose  of  conforming  it  to  the  Hebrew 
standard,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  for  the  suppression  of 
evidence  which  the  Hebrew,  and  itself  originally,  afforded. 
— The  histories  of  Josephus  present,  throughout,  striking 
conformities  with  the  Alexandrine  readings.  —  To  the 
class  of  Greek  textual  authorities  belong  also  the  quota- 
tions from  the  Old  Testament,  in  the  New,  (as  far  as  it 
can  be  made  probable  that  these  were  designed  to  be 
exact,)  and  the  parts  of  Greek  versions,  mentioned  above 
as  having  been  included  in  Origen*s  Hexapla. 

Representations  of  the  Hebrew  text,  as  it  existed  in 
times  long  anterior  to  the  IVIasorites,  are  also  to  be 
sought  in  the  Syriac  Peshito  version,  and  the  oldest 
Chaldee  Targums.  —  The  former  presents  a  repetition  of 
the  remarkable  fact,  observed  in  respect  to  the  Samaritan 
Pentateuch ;  that  of  a  general  characteristic  similarity  to 
the  Alexandrine  readings,  where  the  Alexandrine  differ 
from  the  Hebrew.  — ^'The  Targum  of  Onkelos  is  of  great 
consideration  as  a  textual  guide.  That  of  Jonathan, 
as  being  more  paraphrastic,  is  less  valuable  for  this  use, 
as  it  was  formerly  remarked  to  be  for  the  use  of  inter- 
pretation.    But  this  class  of  authorities  have  also  been 

VOL.    I.  9 


'    t 


66  TEXT  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT.  [LECT. 

charged  with  having  been  remodelled,  by  Jews  of  the 
middle  ages,  after  the  Hebrew  copies  in  their  hands. 

The  Latin  Vulgate  is  another  of  the  most  important 
ante-Masoretic  authorities.  In  preparing  it,  Jerome 
neither  wanted  information  concerning  the  Jewish  read- 
ings, nor  aid  from  the  Jewish  learning,  of  the  time.* 
He  himself  confessed,  however,  that  he  occasionally 
forsook  the  Hebrew  for  the  Greek  ;t  and  his  work  is 
thought  to  have  suffered  alterations  in  later  times,  for 
the  sake  of  conformmg  it  to  the  "  Old  Italic,"  and  on 
the  other  hand,  to  the  Masoretic  Hebrew.  Questions 
of  this  nature,  in  short,  embarrass  the  use  of  all  the 
old  versions,  in  their  application  to  textual  criticism. 

Quotations  of  Old  Testament  passages  in  the  Tal- 
muds  are  not  seldom  found  to  exhibit  readings,  varying 
from  those  of  the  Masoretic  copies.  The  character  of 
Rabbinical  quotations,  from  the  eleventh  century  down- 
ward, is  that  of  coincidence  with  the  Masoretic  text. 
The  Christian  fathers  are  generally  found  to  have  taken 
their  Old  Testament  quotations  from  the  version  used 
in  their  respective  churches,  whether  the  Syriac,  the 
Greek,  or  the  Latin. J 

*  "  Cum  a  me  nuper  literis  flagitassetis,  ut  vobis  Paralipomenon  Latino 
sermone  transferrera,  de  Tiberiade  quendara  legis  doctorem,  qui  apud 
Hebrseos  admirationi  habebatur,  assumsi,  et  contuli  cum  eo  a  vertice,  nt 
aiunt,  usque  ad  extremum  unguem,  et,  sic  confirmatus,  ausus  sum  facere, 
quod  jubebatis."    Hieronyrai  Prefatio  ad  Paralip. 

f  Hieronymi  Prsef.  ad  Pent. ;  Pnef.  ad  Com.  in  Eccles. 

X  The  arrangement  of  the  books  in  our  common  Hebrew  Bibles  is 
that  of  the  Masorites  ;  in  our  English  Bibles,  that  of  the  Latin  Vulgate. 
For  an  exhibition  of  different  arrangements  (fifty  in  nimiber),  which  have 
been  used  at  different  times,  or  are  found  in  some  writer,  see  "  WolPs 
Bibliotheca  Hebrtea,"  Part  i.  Sect.  1,  ad  calcem. 


IV.]  AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  PENTATEUCH.  67 


LECTURE   IV. 

AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  PENTATEUCH. 

Natcre  and  Amount  of  Proof  to  be  looked  for.  —  Statement 
OF  THE  Question.  —  Connexion  of  the  Miraculous  Relations 
IN    the    Pentateuch    with  Later  History.  —  Difficultt    of 

REFERRING  IT  TO  ANT  RECENT  AgE.  —  APPARENT  REFERENCES  TO 
IT    IN    LATER     BoOKS.  ARGUMENT    FROM    THE    NuMBER    OF     EaRLT 

Textual  Corruptions.  —  Objections  to  its  Authenticity, 
FROM  the  Supernatural  Character  of  its  Narrative,  —  from 
SUPPOSED  Immoralities,  and  Erroneous  Views  of  the  Deity, 
—  from  Passages  indicating  a  Later  Origin,  —  from  the  sup- 
posed Modern  Character  of  its  Style.  —  Favorable  Internal 
Evidence,  —  from  the  Good  Influence  exerted  by  it, —  from 
Single  Texts,  —  from  its  Antiquated  Forms  of  Speech, — 
from  its  Journal  Character,  —  from  the  Antique  Spirit  of 
ITS  Laws, —  from  its  Anthropomorphitic  Representations 
of  God,  —  from  the  Chasm  in  its  Historical  Record,  —  from 
THE  Character  of  the  Relations  in  the  Beginning  of  Gen- 
esis.—  Conclusion  from  the  Whole  View. 

In  proceeding  to  aa  inquiry  into  the  authenticity  of 
the  books  attributed  to  Moses,  it  is  of  the  first  impor- 
tance to  have  correct  views  respecting  the  kind  and 
amount  of  evidence,  which  it  is  reasonable  to  demand 
or  expect.  It  must  be  allowed,  that  we  have  by  no 
means  the  same  degree  of  external  testimony  to  the 
authenticity  of  these  writings,  as  we  have  to  that  of 
the  books  of  the  New  Testament ;  a  fact,  which,  so  far 
from  creating  either  surprise  or  discontent,  should 
rather  call  forth  our  gratitude,  that  what  concerns  us 
much  the  more  nearly,  presents  itself  to  our  minds  with 
much  the  greater  accumulation  of  proof. 

But,  while  we  speak  of  the  inferiority  of  external  evi- 
dence in  the  one  case,  to  that  possessed  in  the  other, 


68  AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  [  LECT 

we  should  carefully  observe  the  bearings  of  the  remark. 
If  there  were  no  more  of  this  kind  of  proof  for  the 
source  of  the  Gospel  of  Matthew,  than  there  is  for  that 
of  the  Pentateuch,  the  former  would,  on  that  ground,  be 
justly  liable  to  a  suspicion,  which  by  no  means  attaches 
on  that  ground  to  the  latter ;  inasmuch  as  the  former 
had  its  origin  in  a  comparatively  modern  age,  and  in  an 
age  of  writers,  who  might  reasonably  be  expected  to  be 
taking  some  notice  of  it  at  a  period  not  long  subsequent 
to  that  of  its  production.     The  latter  is  referred,  by  the 
supposition,  to  a  remote  antiquity,  when  there  was  no 
contemporaneous  literature,  which  has   come  down  to 
these  times.     The  fact  (had  it  been  so)  that  no  writer, 
near  to  the  age  and  place  t6  which  Matthew's  narrative 
is  ascribed,  had  recognised  its  existence,  would  have 
afforded  a  good  argument  against  the  truth  of  that  hy- 
pothesis, because  the  works  of  such  writers  are  now 
extant.     The   like  fact   affords   no   such   argument   in 
respect  to  the  narrative  of  Moses,  because,  as  we  have 
not  the  works  of  such  writers  to  consult,  it  cannot  be 
argued  from  any  silence  of  theirs,  that  their  age  was 
ignorant  of  its  existence.    While  I  am  free,  therefore,  to 
acknowledge,  that,  in  my  view,  it  would  be  doing  great 
injustice  to  the  historical  claims  of  the  books  of  the  New 
Testament,  to  maintain  that  the  writings  now  under  our 
notice  stand  upon  equally  firm  grounds  of  proof  with 
them,  I  can  by  no  means  admit,  on  the  other  hand,  that 
these  latter  are  to  be  prejudiced  by  any  such  compari- 
son.    The  question  for  a  wise  consideration  in  respect 
to  these  is,  not  whether  under  different  circumstances, 
they  might  have  been  sustained  by  further  proof,  but 
whether  we  have  in  their  support  a  reasonable  amount 
of  such  proof,  as  the  circumstances  of  their  production 
permitted  to  come  down  to  our  time.     If  they  were 
written  by  Moses,  we  could  now  produce  no  contem- 


IV.]  PENTATEUCH.  69 

poraneous    testimony  to   the    fact.      That   we   cannot 
produce  it,  then,  is  no  proof  to  the  contrary. 

Another  preUminary  remark  is,  that  the  question  on 
the  authenticity  of   the  writings   attributed  to   Moses 
requires  to  be  more  accurately  stated,  than  has  been 
usual.     The  critics,  of  highest  name,  who  have  argued 
for  their  later  origin,  have  still  held  that  the  laws,  which 
they  contain,  are  either  in  whole,  or  in  great  part,  to  be 
referred   to  him  as  their  author  ;  w^hile   they,  on  the 
other  hand,  who  consider  the  books  as  his  production, 
yet  regard  them  as  not  having  come  down  to  us  without 
more  or  less  interpolation.     The  necessity  of  their  ar- 
gument calls  for  this  admission ;  for,  since  it  is  agreed 
on  all  hands,  that  there  is  matter,  now  contained  in  the 
books,  which  must  have  been  composed  at  a  later  time 
than  that  of  Moses,  (inasmuch  as  it  clearly  and  ostensi- 
bly refers  to  more  recent  history,)  the  question  becomes 
reduced  within  these  Hmits; — Either  the  whole  compo- 
sition is  to  be  dated  from  a  later  age  than  that  of  Moses, 
or  else  passages,  afterwards  composed,  w^ere  interpo- 
lated into  his  work.    It  is  clear,  then,  that  between  these 
parties,  the  question  respecting  these  books,  in   their 
present  state,  becomes  a  question  of  more  and  less.     It 
is  a  question,  respecting  the  recent  origin  of  a  larger  or 
a  smaller  portion  of  their  contents.     The  one  class  of 
interpreters,  while  they  would  refer  the  basis  of  the  laws 
to  Moses,  would  comprehend  the  miraculous  relations, 
with  other  parts,  under  the  head  of  subsequent  addi- 
tions, and  thus  make  the  books,  in  their  digested  shape, 
to  be  the  creation  of  a  modern  age.     The  other  class 
(with  better  reason,  as  I  think,)  regard  those  parts  as 
having  a  connexion  with  the  system,  as  well  as  often 
with  the  special  laws,  too  intimate  to  admit  of  their 
being  thus  dissevered;  while  they  conceive  that  gen- 
erally, if  not   uniformly,   the   smaller  portions,  which 


70  ^^'        AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  [  LECT. 


must,  at  all  events,  be  considered  to  have  proceeded 
from  a  later  time,  present,  in  their  construction  or  posi- 
tion, the  appearance  of  not  being  integral  parts  of  the 
work ;  that  (so  to  speak)  these  parts  have  no  essential 
adhesiveness  to  the  context. 

Another  consideration  which  we  ought  to  carry  with 
us  to  the  argument,  is  this.  If  the  narrative  of  Moses' 
ministry,  contained  in  these  books,  is  true,  it  affords  us 
an  intelligible  account  of  another  fact,  indisputable  as  to 
its  reality,  and  of  a  most  extraordinary  character;  a 
fact,  the  occurrence  of  which  we  are  unable  in  any 
other  way  to  explain ;  viz.  that  of  the  existence,  among 
the  Jews,  of  religious  institutions  of  a  peculiar  descrip- 
tion, embodying  and  sustaining  a  pure  theology.  The 
fact  no  one  would  call  in  question.  From  the  earliest 
period  in  which  the  Jews  appear  in  history,  they  are 
found  in  possession  of  the  doctrine  of  One  God.  Whence 
did  they  obtain  it ;  and,  when  obtained,  how  did  they 
preserve  it  ?  Let  the  Jewish  views  of  the  divine  char- 
acter and  providence  be  compared  with  those  of  other 
nations,  as  the  literature  or  the  history  of  other  nations 
has  made  their  views  known  to  us.  Let  the  hymns  of 
David,  for  instance,  be  compared  with  the  Theogony  of 
Hesiod,  not  very  remote  from  them  in  point  of  time. 
In  the  former,  what  true  and  just  conceptions  respecting 
the  undivided  being  and  sovereignty  of  God ;  and, 
substantially,  what  correct  and  affecting  views  of  his 
attributes,  and  bis  relations  to  man ;  and  how  perfectly 
contrasted  with  all  the  representations  of  the  Greek 
poet  upon  the  same  subject  !  All  the  rest  of  the 
world  was  abandoned  to  different  forms  of  senseless 
and  corrupting  idolatry.  History  affords  no  ground 
for  any  qualification  of  this  statement.  But  in  Judea 
there  shone  a  pure  light  of  divine  truth.  To  what 
was  this  owing  ?    Not  to  the  greater  civilization  of  the 


IV.]  PENTATEUCH.  '^^^'  71 

Jews.  It  would  provoke  a  smile,  to  compare  the  cul- 
ture of  that  people,  in  their  palmiest  days,  with  that  of 
the  nations  from  which  we  have  the  classical  mythology. 
How  came  it,  that  this  nation,  otherwise  certainly  not 
distinguished  above  others,  escaped  the  else  universal 
tendency  of  mankind  to  a  foolish  and  depraving  wor- 
ship ?  Admit  the  truth  of  the  Mosaic  history,  and  all 
is  clear.  Deny  it,  and  the  most  extraordinary  and 
perplexing  problem  (shall  I  not  say  ?)  in  all  history, 
is  presented. 

I  am  reasoning  for  those  who  admit  the  abstract 
credibility  of  miracles ;  and  to  them  I  submit,  that  the 
reality  of  the  Mosaic  miracles  is  rendered  positively 
and  strongly  probable,  by  the  known  existence,  in  after 
times,  of  that  theology,  in  support  of  which  they  are 
alleged  to  have  been  wrought.  They  are  requisite  to 
account  for  an  undeniable  fact.  That  the  Jewish  na- 
tion, when  it  emerges  from  the  darkness  of  antiquity 
into  relations  with  other  states,  and  into  the  notice  of 
history,  is  found  in  possession  of  such  a  theology,  is  a 
fact,  only  to  be  explained,  considering  the  condition  of 
other  nations  as  compared  with  its  own,  on  the  sup- 
position of  its  having  received  a  supernatural  revelation. 
Such  a  revelation  is  only  to  be  authenticated,  as  far  as 
we  can  see,  by  displays  of  supernatural  power.  If  such 
displays  of  power  were  made,  then  it  seems  altogether 
more  reasonable  to  suppose  that  they  were  the  same, 
for  whose  record  the  nation  points  to  books  ascribed 
to  the  lawgiver  himself,  than  to  suppose  that  the  record 
of  miracles  actually  wrought  is  lost,  and  that  a  narra- 
tive of  others  has  been  fabricated  in  their  place.  The 
earlier  history,  if  true,  solves  the  problem  of  the  later. 
It  should  be  shown  to  be  subject  to  strong  objections, 
before  it  can  properly  be  rejected,  to  leave  that  prob- 
lem unexplained. 


72  AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  [LECT. 

I  ascribe  much  importance  to  the  consideration  of 
the  difficulty  of  fixing,  with  any  probability,  on  any 
later  period  in  history,  as  admitting  of  the  composition 
of  the  Pentateuch,  than  that  to  which  the  current  opin- 
ion actually  refers  it;  that  is,  if  we  allow  general  his- 
torical authority  to  the  books,  which  relate  the  subsequent 
history  of  the  Jews  ;,for  it  is  true,  that  without  them  we 
have  no  grounds  on  which  to  reason.  The  assignment 
to  a  date  belonging  to  the  period  of  the  Judges,  would, 
I  apprehend,  be  attended  with  rather  less  difficulty,  than 
any  other,  except  that  which  I  believe  to  be  the  true  one. 
It  would,  however,  be  liable  to  the  strong  objections, 
that  the  times  of  the  Judges  were  extremely  disturbed 
and  unsettled,  and  such  as  to  make  the  conjecture  a 
violent  one,  that  they  could  either  have  given  birth  to 
the  composition,  or  have  admitted  of  the  introduction  of 
the  institutions,  to  which,  whenever  received,  it  must 
have  given  rise ;  and  still  more,  that  they  were  too 
near  to  the  time  of  the  alleged  ministry  of  Moses,  to 
allow  a  fabricated  account  of  events,  which,  if  real,  must 
have  been  matter  of  such  recent  notoriety,  to  obtain 
circulation  or  credence.  If  we  advance  from  the  time 
of  the  Judges,  to  that  of  the  Kings  of  the  twelve 
tribes,  besides  the  passage  in  the  seventeenth  chapter  of 
Deuteronomy,*  which  breathes  such  a  vehement  spirit 
of  jealousy  of  regal  government,!  we  are  met  by  the 
great  difficulty,  that  the  whole  character  and  bearing  of 
the  Jewish  institutions,  as  the  law  prescribes  them,  is 
thoroughly  republican ;  and  of  course,  when  there  was 

*  Verse  18  et  seq. 

f  The  tone  of  the  book  of  Judges,  probably  written  after  the  establish- 
ment of  the  monarchy,  is  characteristically  opposed  to  that  of  this 
passage.  In  the  last  chapters,  the  reader  is  repeatedly  reminded,  where 
the  relation  of  any  disorder  or  outrage  occurs,  that  it  took  place  in  times 
when  "  there  was  no  king  in  Israel,"  and  accordingly  "  every  man  did 
that  which  was  right  in  his  own  eyes."    Judges  xvii.  6 ;  xviii.  1 ;  xxL  25. 


IV.]  PENTATEUCH.  73 

a  monarch,  the  time  had  passed  for  any  such  system 
to  be  devised.  After  the  revolt  of  the  ten  tribes,  and 
the  consequent  establishment  of  two  independent  mon- 
archies, the  state  of  things  continued  such  as  to  cause 
the  last  consideration  to  have  at  least  equal  weight ;  and 
to  this  is  to  be  thenceforward  added  the  extreme  im- 
probability, that  the  northern  kingdom  would  have  re- 
ceived the  law,  or  any  of  its  institutions,  from  a  people 
against  whom  they  continued  to  cherish  a  bitter  hostility.* 
All  the  evidence,  then,  which  we  have  of  its  existence 
among  them,  appears  to  be  substantially  so  much  proof 
of  its  having  existed  among  them  before  the  separation. 
If,  ascribing  little  importance,  or  giving  a  different  ex- 
planation, to  the  testimony  relating  to  the  existence  of 
the  law  in  the  northern  kingdom,  we  should  fix  on  the 
time  during  which  the  kingdom  of  Judah  survived  it, 
for  the  production  of  the  books,  our  argument  w^ould 
still  labor  under  the  difficulty  presented  by  their  per- 
vading and  essential  republican  tone ;  and  the  possibility 
of  such  a  theological  system  being  devised  at  a  period, 
when  the  nation  had  multiplied  its  relations  with  sur- 
rounding idolatrous  states,  will  become  more  incredible. 
On  the  return  from  the  captivity,  we  are  told  of  the 
reading  of  the  law  of  Moses  to  the  people,  by  Ezra, 
and  of  many  of  them  divorcing  their  wives,  agreeably 
to  the  directions  which  they  understood  it  to  contain.! 
Their  interpretation  of  its  precepts  may  or  not  have 
been  correct ;  but  their  obedience,  in  such  a  case,  to 

*  The  occurrence  of  alternate  honorable  notices  of  the  ancestry  of  the 
tribes  of  Joseph  and  Judah  respectively,  is  another  objection  to  this 
scheme.  Compare  Gen.  xlix.  8-12,  with  22-26;  Deut.  xxxiii.  7,  with 
13-17.  Numerous  historical  relations,  reflecting  honor  now  on  one,  now 
on  the  other  of  these  tribes,  wUl  present  themselves  in  the  same  view.  It 
is  difficult  to  imagine  a  citizen  of  either  the  northern,  or  the  southern 
kingdom,  making  such  records  as  we  find,  flattering  to  the  national  pride 
of  the  rival  state. 

f  Ezra  X.  1  -  10. 

VOL.    I.  10 


74  AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  [LECT. 

its  supposed  injunction,  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired 
in  the  way  of  evidence  respecting  the  sense  which 
they  entertained  of  its  authority.  The  time  of  Nehe- 
miah  approaches,  within  about  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years,  to  that  when  the  Pentateuch  was  translated  into 
Greek,  as  containing  the  record  of  the  origin  of  the 
Jewish  institutions. 

At  this  period,  we  also  become  able  to  make  observa- 
tions on  the  text  of  the  Pentateuch,  which  may  be 
thought  to  have  an  important  connexion  with  this  ar- 
i||^  gument.  We  find  the  readings  of  the  Greek  version 
to  be  different,  in  numerous  instances,  from  those  of  the 
Hebrew  original  now  in  our  hands,  indicating,  that,  to 
*'p%'  some  extent,  diversities  existed  in  different  copies  at 
the  time  when  that  version  was  made.  Still  more,  we 
find  an  agreement  between  them  in  not  a  few  readings, 
which  from  satisfactory  considerations,  we  conclude  to 
be  deviations  from  the  original  text.  Considering  the 
amount  of  such  deviations,  the  manner  in  which  they 
pervade  the  whole  texture  of  the  volume,  and  the  pe- 
cuUar  character  of  some  of  them,  a  strong  probability 
may  be  thought  to  exist,  that  they  could  only  have  been 
produced  as  a  consequence  of  repeated  transcriptions ; 
in  other  words,  that  a  course  of  ages  must  have  elapsed 
between  the  date  of  the  original  composition,  and  the 
date  of  those  textual  corruptions  of  it  which  we  now 
discern.  —  And,  if  we  believe  the  Samaritan  Pentateuch 
to  have  existed  among  the  northern  tribes  before  the 
separation  of  the  kingdoms,  or  even  from  the  time  of 
Ezra,  it  affords  us  a  still  stronger  argument  of  the 
same  kind,  since  it  resembles  the  Septuagint,  not  only 
in  the  exhibition  of  readings  different  from  those  of 
ouc  Hebrew,  but  in  the  exhibition  of  interpolations  and 
glosses,  which  must  have  found  their  way  into  the 
copies,  at  an   earlier  time  than  that  to  which  any  of 


IV.]  PENTATEUCH.  75 

our  now  extant  authorities  reach,  and  which  themselves 
must  have  been  much  posterior  in  their  date  to  the 
original  composition,  since  only  a  long  course  of  time 
could  have  created  a  necessity  for  such  illustrations. 

I  would  retrace  this  evidence,  at  the  same  time 
bringing  into  view  some  passages  in  later  Jewish  books 
(attributed  to  successive  ages),  in  which  the  Penta- 
teuch has  been  understood  to  be  referred  to,  as  al- 
ready in  existence.  —  The  volume  which  three  hundred 
years  before  Christ  was  translated  into  Greek  as  con- 
taining the  ancient  Jewish  documents,  (received  by  the 
natioQ  as  such,  whether  in  Palestine,  Egypt,  or  else- 
where,) could  hardly  have  been  fabricated  between  that 
time  and  the  time  of  Nehemiah,  a  century  and  a  half 
earlier;  and  when  we  read  in  his  book  of  something 
"  written  in  the  Law,"  *  which  w^e  actually  find  in  the 
volume  in  question,  and  of  a  reading  "in  the  book  of 
Moses,"  t  to  which  the  same  remark  applies,  and  of  a 
reading,  "in  the  book  of  the  Law  of  God," J  it  seems 
an  inadmissible  hypothesis,  that  in  this  short  interval 
Nehemiah's  "  book  of  the  Law  "  had  disappeared,  and 
another  succeeded  to  its  place.  With  Nehemiah,  Ezra 
was  contemporary,  (unless  we  will  undertake  to  deny 
the  historical  credibility  of  these  later  books,)  and  he 
too  speaks  of  "the  book  of  Moses,"  and  of  writing 
contained  "  m  the  Law  of  Moses,  the  man  of  God,"  § 
which  composition  there  can  be  no  doubt,  w^hatever  it 
was,  was  the  same  to  which  Nehemiah  applied  the 
like  names.  If  we  date  the  books  of  the  Chronicles 
correctly,  they  were  compiled  about   the   same   time, 

*  Neh.  X.  34,  36.    Compare  x.  29-39,  with  e,  g.  Ex.  xiii.  13,  xxiii.  10, 
19;  Lev.  xxv.  4;  Num.  xviii.  12  ;  Deut  xiv.  22. 
t  Neh.  xiii.  1.    Compare  Deut.  xxiii.  3. 
t  Neh.  viii.  8. 
§  Ezra  iii.  2  ;  vi.  18. 


^^' 


76  AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  [LECT. 

and  they  too  testify  *  to  the  existence  of  a  "  Law  of 
the  book  of  Moses,"  of  a  "  book  of  Moses,"  of  a  writ- 
ing "  in  the  Law  of  Moses,"  of  .a  "  book  of  the  Law 
of  the  Lord,"  and  of  a  writing  "in  the  Law  of  the 
Lord,"  which  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  was  different 
from  that  so  named  in  Ezra  and  Nehemiah.  In  Ezra's 
time,  as  has  been  observed,  we  have  the  best  evidence 
(if  we  admit  the  truth  of  the  then  recorded  transactions) 
of  the  sacred  authority  attributed  to  the  book ;  and  the 
Chronicles,  in  the  texts  which  I  have  cited,  recognise 
the  existence  of  the  same  book  in  the  reigns  of  Josiah, 
Amaziah,  Joash,  Jehoshaphat,  and  David,  antecedent  in 
different  ages  to  Nehemiah,  the  last  preceding  him 
by  about  five  hundred  years.  The  books  of  Kings 
I  think  will  appear  to  have  been  written  about  the  time 
of  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem,  a  period,  again,  alto- 
gether too  near  to  that  of  the  composition  of  the  books 
of  Chronicles,  for  the  name  "Law  of  Moses,"  which 
they  too  speak  off  as  a  written  law,  to  be  transferred 
from  one  authoritative  and  necessarily  notorious  work, 
to  another  pretending  to  its  authority.  In  addition  to 
the  recognition,  in  the  historical  books  of  Kings  and 
Chronicles,  of  the  existence  of  the  book  called  the 
"  book  of  the  Law  of  Moses,"  and  the  "  book  of  the 
Law  of  the  Lord,"  throughout  the  period  of  the  Kings, 
I  have  before  urged  the  extreme  difficulty  (from  the 
universal  political  spirit  of  the  Pentateuch)  of  sup- 
posing it  to  be  a  forgery  produced  within  that  period ; 
a  period  which  covers  the  whole  time  between  the 
composition  of  the  books  of  Kings,  and  that  of  the 
book  of  Joshua,  if,  as  I  think  we  may  hereafter  see 
reason  to  allow,  this  latter  book  is  to  be  referred  to  a 

*  2  Cliron.  xxv.  4,  (compare  DeuL  xxiv.  16.) ;  xxxv.  12;  zxiiL  18;  xvii. 
9;  1  Chron,  xvi.  40. 
f  1  Kings  ii.  3;  2  Kings  xiv.  6. 


IV.]  PENTATEUCH.  77 

time  not  far  remote  from  the  accession  of  Saul  or 
David.  In  Joshua  we  find  not  only  a  "  book  of  the 
Law"  *  spoken  of,  and  a  "book  of  the  Law  of  Moses," f 
but  we  find  it  related  to  have  been  Joshua's  guide 
about  four  hundred  years  earlier  than  the  time  of  the 
Kings,  and  in  some  passages  we  have  precise  notices 
of  its  contents,^  which,  corresponding  with  the  con- 
tents of  the  Pentateuch  now  in  our  hands,  aid  us,  as 
far  as  they  go,  to  identify  the  one  with  the  other. 
And  upon  this  period  also  bear  the  remarks  before 
made,  relating  to  the  necessity  of  the  book  of  the 
Law  having  been  composed  before  the  separation 
of  the  kingdoms,  if,  in  fact,  it  was  received  by  the 
northern  tribes,  and  to  the  unsuitableness  of  the  period 
of  the  Judges  for  the  production  of  such  a  work.§ 

I  am  not  unaware,  that  such  an  argument,  as  I  have 
here  detailed,  is  not  of  the  nature  of  demonstration.  It 
may  be  said  in  reply,  that  the  assumed  dates  of  the 
successive  writings  to  which  I  have  referred,  require 
themselves  to  be  proved ;  and  there  may  be  hesitation 
respecting  the  identity  of  the  "book  of  the  Law,"  to 
which  they  refer,  with  the  Pentateuch  in  our  hands. 
The  answer  to  one,  w^ho  should  take  the  former  ground, 
would  be  furnished  by  the  general  impossibility  of  the 
production  of  such  a  succession  of  forgeries  (for  suc- 
cession it  must  have  been,  as  the  differences  in  style 
between   the   different  books  sufficiently  show) ;    and 

*  Josh.  i.  8 ;  viii.  34.  t  ^^  31 ;  xxiiL  6. 

I  Ibid.  xi.  12;  (compare  Numb,  xxxiii.  52  seq.  Deut.  vii.  1  seq.)  xiv. 
2,  4,  5;  (compare  Nmnb.  xxvL  52-56;  xxxv.  1  seq.)  xvii,  3-6;  (com- 
pare Numb,  xxvii.  1-11.)  xx.  1-9;  xxL  1-8.  (compare  Ex.  xxi.  13; 
Numb.  xxxv.  9-30;  Deut.  xix.  1-13.) 

§  For  large  lists  of  passages,  understood  to  have  the  bearing  alluded 
to  in  this  paragrapli,  see  Jahn,  Introductio  in  Libros  Sacros  V.  F.,  Pars,  2, 
§  6,  8.  Huet,  Demonstratio  Evangelica,  prop.  4,  cap.  1.  Witsii  Miscella- 
nea Sacra,  lib.  1,  cap.  14. 


78  AUTHENTICITY   OF  THE  [  LECT. 

particularly  by  all  the  arguments,  hereafter  to  engage 
us,  which  go  to  prove  the  assumed  date  of  the  several 
later  books  to  be  the  true  one.  To  the  question 
respecting  the  identity,  I  know  of  nothing  material  to 
be  added  to  what  has  been  already  urged,  which  could 
be  stated  to  much  advantage  in  general  terms.  As  we 
proceed  to  the  examination  of  the  later  books,  we  shall 
constantly  have  occasion  to  take  notice  of  a  condition 
of  things,  and  of  opinions  and  practices  among  the  Jews, 
which  it  may  appear  to  us  are  hardly  to  be  explained, 
except  on  the  supposition  that  the  Law,  essentially  the 
same  that  it  is  known  to  us,  was  in  their  hands,  during  the 
successive  periods  of  their  history.  For  the  present,  I 
suppose  it  will  be  readily  allowed,  that  the  language, 
which  I  have  quoted  from  the  later  books,  is  what  we 
might  expect  to  find  it  on  the  supposition  that  a  refer- 
ence to  our  Pentateuch  was  intended,  and  such  as  any 
one  would  be  disposed  to  receive  in  proof  of  its  early 
origin,  unless  he  was  of  opinion,  that  there  is  internal 
evidence  against  the  authenticity,  such  as  to  outweigh 
the  external  in  its  favor.* 

*  I  say  "  internal  evidence,"  because,  as  to  external,  from  the  earliest 
period  to  which  our  knowledge  of  Jewish  opinions  can  be  traced  back,  I 
cannot  find  good  proof  of  the  existence  of  any  doubt  concerning  the 
Mosaic  origin  of  the  Pentateuch,  earlier  than  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, when  such  a  doubt  was  timidly  expressed  (in  respect,  however,  only 
to  some  passages,  and  only  on  critical  grounds)  by  a  Jewish  doctor,  Aben 
Ezra,  (See  Spinoza's  Tractatus  Historico-Politici,  cap.  8.  But  compare 
Semler's  "  Apparatus  ad  lib.  V.  T.  Interpret"  lib.  1,  cap.  2,  §  27.)  Spinoza, 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  assailed  the  authenticity  elaborately ;  and 
Hobbes,  in  his  treatise  entitled  "  Libri  Mosis  non  a  Mose,  sed  de  Mose, 
scripti  sunt."  Le  Clerc  at  first  adopted  their  opinion  ("  Sentimens  de 
Q,uelques  Th6ologiens  d'HoUande  "),  but  afterwards  retracted  it,  and  ar- 
gued against  it  in  the  Preface  to  his  Commentary  on  the  Old  Testament. 
It  is  well  known  to  be  entertained  by  some  of  the  most  celebrated  German 
critics  of  the  present  day ;  as  Bertholdt,  Vater,  Gesenius,  and  De  Wette. 

One  sometimes  meets  with  the  statement,  that  many  of  the  early  here- 
tics, especially  among  the  Gnostics,  were  "  opposed  to  the  Pentateuch." 
This  assertion  needs  to  be  defined.    Many  of  the  early  heretics  were 


1 


IV.  ]  PENTATEUCH.  79 

On  the  whole,  I  apprehend  that  the  external  evidence 
for  the  authenticity  of  the  Pentateuch  is  substantially 
all,  which,  on  the  supposition  of  its  authenticity,  we 
could  expect  under  the  circumstances  to  possess ;  and 

oppos.ed  to  the  Pentateuch,  in  the  sense  of  its  being  a  book  of  truth  and 
authority  ;  but  few,  if  any  (as  far  as  I  can  learn),  were  opposed  to  it  in  its 
claim  to  have  proceeded  from  Moses'  hand. 

Irenseus,  for  instance,  says,  that  Basilides  (early  in  the  second  century,) 
was  an  enemy  to  the  Law.  But  he  was  so  far  from  being  an  enemy  to  it 
in  the  only  sense  with  which  we  are  concerned,  that  his  evidence  is  dis- 
tinctly in  favor  of  its  Mosaic  origin.  He  believed  that  Moses  gave  and 
recorded  it,  but  that  Moses  was  prompted  in  its  promulgation,  not  by  the 
Supreme  God,  but  by  an  inferior  deity.  "  Prophetias  autem  et  ipsas  a 
mundi  fabric atorib us  fuisse  ait  [Basilides]  principibus,  proprie  autem  legem, 
a  principe  ipsorum,  qui  eduxerit  populum  de  terra  Egypti."  Irenseus 
adv.  Hser.  lib.  1,  cap.  23. 

For  proof  that  the  same  thing  is  true  of  Marcion,  and  of  the  Manichseans, 
see  Lardner,  History  of  Heretics,  book  2,  chap.  10,  §  31,  Credibility,  &c. 
Part  2,  chap.  63,  §  6.  They  rejected  the  Law,  not  as  falsely  claiming  to 
have  been  given  by  Moses,  but,  on  the  contrary,  as  given  by  Moses  under 
a  false  representation  of  having  proceeded  from  the  Deity.      "  Deum, 

qui  legem  per  Moysen  dedit, non  esse  verum  Deum,  sed  unum  ex 

principibus  tenebrarum  [dicunt  Manichsei],"  says  Augustin  as  quoted  by 
Lardner.  And  again ;  "  Legem  per  famulum  Dei  Moysen  datum,  non  a 
vero  Deo  dicunt." 

Tertullian  (de  Prsescriptione  Hsereticorum,  §  1,  p.  223,  Paris  edition,) 
says  of  Apelles,  whom  he  calls  a  follower  of  Marcion  and  Cerdon ;  "  Legem 

et  prophetas  repudiat"    But  he  adds ;  "  Habet  suos  libros in  quibus 

probare  vult,  quod  omnia  qusecunque  Moses  de  Deo  scripserit,  vera  non 
sint,  sed  falsa  sint." 

All  such  views  are  opposed,  in  the  most  direct  manner,  to  the  theory, 
which,  in  a  hasty  adoption  of  the  general  statement,  that  early  heretics 
were  "  opposed  to  the  Pentateuch,"  they  might  be  thought  to  favor. 

I  have  said  above,  that,  as  far  as  I  can  learn,  few,  if  any,  early  heretics 
were  opposed  to  the  Pentateuch,  in  its  claim  to  have  proceeded  from 
Moses'  hand.  Of  course  there  may  be  much  evidence  on  the  subject, 
with  which  I  am  not  acquainted.  But  I  have  met  with  nothing,  which 
strikes  me  as  material,  except  in  a  single  period  in  John  of  Damascus,  com- 
monly reckoned  the  last  of  the  Greek  Fathers.  He  flourished  as  late  as 
the  eighth  century.  Of  the  Nazarenes,  he  says,  that  they  hold  the  wri- 
tings of  the  Pentateuch  not  to  have  proceeded  from  Moses.     Tay  rUf  «)p- 

TaTtvp^eu     y^xtpki     »vk     tifteu     Moi/Vta;;     ^oyfiXTil^aufiy.        (De    Hffires.     19.        Le 

Quien's  edition,  Vol.  L  p.  80.)  I  am  at  a  loss  to  explain  this  statement, 
supposing  it  to  be  correct,  in  consistency  with  the  notorious  fact,  that  the 
Nazarenes,  as  long  as  they  are  known  in  history,  were  zealous  for  the 


80  AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  [LECT. 

that  in  all,  or  most  minds,  it  would  actually  create  a 
strong  persuasion  of  the  authenticity  of  the  work,  were 
not  its  contents  thought  to  be  such  as  to  bring  sus- 
picion upon  that  hypothesis. 

obligations  of  the  law.  See  Lardner's  Jewish  Testimonies,  chap.  1,  §  2. 
I  am  fain  to  believe,  that  John,  writing  in  a  comparatively  modern  age,  had 
misunderstood  some  previous  author.  That  he  knew  little  of  the  Naza- 
renes,  may  be  presumed,  since  he  only  devotes  ten  lines  to  a  community 
or  class  of  believers,  as  interesting  as  any  in  all  Church  History.  Besides, 
his  credit  is  not  good.     See  Venema,  Instit  Hist.  Eccles.,  Vol.  V.  §  150. 

Epiphanius'  account  of  Ptolemy  (de  Hseres.  cap.  33,  p.  216  et  seq.,  Paris 
edition)  is  hardly  to  be  brought  into  this  controversy.  Ptolemy,  he  says, 
who  {§  1,)  embraced  the  heresy  of  the  Gnostics  and  Valentinians,  and 
added  some  things  to  what  he  derived  from  his  masters,  "  is  not  ashamed 
(§  2,)  to  sptjak  injuriously  of  God's  Law  by  Moses."  In  what  way  Ptole- 
my speaks  of  it  injuriously,  Epiphanius  goes  on  to  show,  by  quoting  (§  3-8,) 
a  letter  from  Ptolemy  to  Flora,  wherein  Ptolemy  maintains,  tliat  the  Law 
proceeded  partly  from  God,  partly  from  Moses,  and  partly  from  tlie  "  elders 
of  the  people."  In  the  distinction  between  parts  of  the  Law  ascribed  to 
God,  and  other  parts  ascribed  to  Moses,  there  is  of  course  no  implication 
of  any  doubt,  that  the  record,  so  far,  was  from  Moses'  hand ;  on  the  con- 
trary, the  reality  of  that  fact  is  implied.  To  maintain  his  view,  tliat  part 
of  the  Law  proceeded  from  "  the  elders,"  Ptolemy,  so  far  from  referring 
to  any  tradition  from  other  times,  or  any  difference  of  opinion  existing  in 
his  own,  appeals  to  the  scriptural  texts,  Isaiah  xxix.  13,  Matthew  xv.  6,  and 
Mark  vii.  7,  in  which  he  understands  Isaiah  and  Jesus  respectively  to 
declare,  that  traditionary  interpretations  have  been  inserted  in  the  body  of 
the  scriptures ;  an  argument,  which  Epiphanius  tells  him  (§  9,)  only  proves 
his  great  ignorance,  in  imagining  that  the  glosses  condemned  had  been 
interpolated  into  the  text,  and  which,  indeed,  it  is  difficult  to  believe  could 
ever  have  been  seriously  urged. 

Ezra  is  said,  in  some  passages  of  the  Fathers,  to  have  been  the  "  restorer 
of  the  Law  "  ;  and  from  this,  and  other  like  language,  it  has  been  argued, 
that  those  who  entertained  that  opinion  must  have  believed  the  books  of 
Moses  to  have  been  lost  before  Ezra's  time  ;  in  other  words,  they  must 
have  believed,  that,  when  Ezra  came  back  from  Babylon,  those  books  were 
not  in  existence  (Herbst  "  Observationes  queedam  de  Pentateucho,"  &.c.in 
"  Commentationes  Theologicse,"  by  RosenmQller  and  others.  Vol.  I.  Part 
1,  §  18.)  And  this  view  is  thought  to  receive  confirmation  from  a  passage 
in  the  Apocryphal  book  called  the  second  book  of  Esdras,  (xiv.  19-48.) 

This  book  is  a  rhapsody,  written,  as  I  believe,  by  some  Christian.  The 
representation,  which  it  contains,  of  Ezra's  asking  to  be  permitted  to  re- 
new the  Law,  does  not  imply,  to  my  mind,  the  existence  of  any  tradition 
to  that  effect.  The  whole  is  a  work  of  imagination.  And,  in  fact,  what 
Ezra  is  represented  as  having  obtained  leave  to  write,  is  not  the  Penta- 


IV.]  PENTATEUCH.  81 

This  remark  brings  us  to  a  consideration  of  the  in- 
ternal evidence.  And,  first,  if  there  be  those  who 
discredit  the  Pentateuch,  on  account  simply  of  its  con- 
taining a  miraculous  history,  it  is  not  with  them  that 

teuch,  but  [ninety-four,  or]  two  hundred  and  four  books  (v.  44)  of  which 
he  was  to  reserve  seventy  (v.  46)  for  the  reading  of  the  wise. 

Jerome  (ad  Helvidium,  Vol.  ii.  p.  8.,  Erasmus's  edition,)  has  this  lan- 
guage, "  Whether  you  choose  to  name  Moses  the  author  of  the  Penta- 
teuch, or  Ezra  its  restorer,  I  do  not  object."  ("Sive  Moysen  dicere  volue- 
ris  auctorem  Pentateuchi,  sive  Esram  instauratorem,  non  recuso.")  Jerome 
is  referring  to  the  expression  "  to  this  day,"  as  found  in  two  places  of  the 
Pentateuch,  which  he  specifies  (Gen.  xxxv.  4,  where,  however,  the  words 
are  not  now  extant  in  the  Hebrew,  and  Deut.  xxxiv.  6).  The  words  "  this 
day,"  he  says,  in  the  period  preceding  that  quoted  above,  must  refer  to  the 
time,  when  the  narrative  in  which  they  are  found  was  arranged.  "  Certe 
Jwdiernus  dies  illius  temporis  existimandus  est,  quo  historia  contexta  est." 
This  is  equally  true,  he  argues,  whether  you  regard  Moses  the  author  of 
the  work,  or  Ezra  its  restorer  ;  implying  that  the  words  "  this  day,"  may, 
in  the  first  text  referred  to,  have  proceeded  from  Moses  himself,  since  he 
lived  some  generations  after  Jacob,  to  whom  the  text  relates,  while  in  the 
latter  passage,  it  is  probable  that  they  proceeded  from  Ezra,  since  they 
recognise  Moses's  death  as  having  occurred.  In  that  case  he  inserted  them 
in  his  character  of  restorer,  or  reviser,  of  the  Law,  an  office  commonly 
attributed  to  him,  by  Jews  and  Christians,  at  the  time  when  Jerome  lived. 

Augustine  says,  (Vol.  iii.  col.  751,  D.,  Basil  edition,)  "  The  time  of  the 
captivity  being  complete, God  provided  for  the  return  of  his  peo- 
ple, and  the  remission  of  their  captivity,  by  the  clemency  of  Cyrus.  At 
which  time  Esdras,  the  priest  of  God,  restored  the  Law  burned  by  the 
Chaldees  in  the  archives  of  the  Temple  ;  being  full  of  the  same  spirit,  in 
which  it  had  been  written."  I  find  nothing  here,  but  the  statement,  that, 
the  standard  copy  of  the  Temple  having  been  burned,  Ezra  took  care  to 
supply  its  place  with  another,  which  might  be  relied  on  as  being  correct, 
since  Ezra  was  endued  with  a  like  spirit  to  that  of  Moses,  its  author,  and 
accordingly  could  make  no  mistake.  His  supposed  inspiration  was  referred 
to,  as  giving  authority  to  his  editorial  labor,  just  as  (with  a  view  to  similar 
security)  inspiration  was  attributed  to  the  Septuagint  translators,  in  the 
Jewish  fable  concerning  that  version.  If  Augustine  had  meant  as  much 
more  than  this,  as  some  have  supposed,  he  was  not  the  man  to  dismiss  it 
in  a  period. 

To  the  same  effect  I  understand  Irenceus,  who  in  fact  gives,  in  his  con- 
text, the  fable  to  which  I  have  referred  in  the  last  paragraph.  "  At  the 
captivity  of  Nebuchadnezzar,"  says  he,  (lib.  3,  cap.  25,  p.  255 ;  Oxford 

edition,  1702,)  "  the  Scriptures  being  corrupted, God  inspired  Ezra 

to  arrange  again  all  the  words  of  the  prophets,  who  had  gone  before, 
and  to  restore  to  the  people  the  legislation  through  Moses."     Aix^ix^urZt 
VOL.    I.  11 


32.  AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  [  LECT. 

I  am  now  arguing ;  but  with  those,  who, — believing,  that, 
as  often  as  it  may  concern  the  divine  goodness  to 
make  a  special  revelation  to  men,  a  revelation  will  be 
made,  and  that  it  will  then  be  ratified,  in  the  only  way, 
which,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  is  possible,  that  is,  by 
miracles,  and  believing  that  such  a  revelation  was  ac- 
tually made  through  Jesus  to  the  world,  —  are  prepared 
to  admit  also  the  antecedent  credibility  of  a  miracu- 
lous revelation  through  Moses  to  the  Jews. 

Again ;  if  it  is  urged,  that  immoralities  are  command- 
ed, and  erroneous  and  unworthy  views  of  the  Deity 
presented,  as  they  have  been  thought  to  be,  in  the 
Pentateuch,  the  conclusion  against  its  supernatural  ori- 
gin will,  I  admit,  be  made  out,  provided  the  fact  can 
be  sustained.  It  must,  therefore,  be  the  course  of  an 
advocate  of  its  authenticity,  and  it  will  be  mine  in 
what  follows,  to  show  that  the  alleged  facts  are  not 
proved,  and  do  not  exist.  But  this  is  an  argument, 
which  is  only  to  be  presented  in  the  examination  of 
single  passages,  as  they  successively  occur. 

When  it  is  said,  further,  that  there  are  parts  of  the 
Pentateuch,  which  Moses  could  not  have  written,  the 
truth  of  the  remark  must  be  admitted.  The  inference 
attempted  to  be  founded  on  it,  is  met  by  the  general 
observation,  that  later  interpolations  might  well  be  ex- 
pected to  occur  in  a  composition  so  ancient ;  in  addi- 
tion to  which,  I  expect  to  show,  in  respect   to   them 


rut  y^tcfZr rous    r^tytyovirur  v^o^tiTZt  vriiTcii  itavil^cifteLi   Xiyaus,  kx) 

The  representation  of  Clement  of  Alexandria,  appears  to  me  to  be  of 

the   same   character.      'K^ifec, $/   <>   y'mrai  ii  irtXir^ttvit   raZ   XitZ, 

«»2    *    tH*  ^ttirnvffrttr  itaytu^ifftif    xai  itciKcuurfiit   Xayiui.      (StTOmata,  lib,   1, 

p.  241 ;  Leyden  edition  of  1616.)  "  Ezra,  through  whom  was  the  re- 
demption of  the  people,  and  the  rtctnaion  and  renewal  of  the  divinely 
inspired  oracles."  It  is  revision,  recension,  and  republication  which  are 
spoken  of;  and  not,  that  I  csui  find,  reproduction,  in  any  case. 


IV.]  PENTATEUCH.  83 

individually,  that  they  are  mostly,  if  not  all,  of  a  clearly 
parenthetical  character,  and  precisely  such  as  it  might 
be  supposed  they  would  be  .found,  if  they  did  not  make 
part  of  the  original  texture  of  the  piece,  but  were  glosses 
brought  into  it  by  later  hands.* 

When  it  is  urged,  that  the  style  of  the  Pentateuch 
very  closely  resembles  that  of  the  compositions  of  the 
age  of  David  and  Solomon,  leading  to  a  suspicion  of 
a  contemporaneous  origin,  I  reply,  what  I  believe  no 
competent  Hebrew  scholar  will  dispute,  that,  (when  a 
proper  allowance  has  been  made  for  the  Chaldaisms, 
introduced  by  foreign  intercourse  in  the  more  recent 
times,)  the  difference  of  style  between  the  Psalms  of 
David  and  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  for  example,  which, 
on  our  supposition,  were  but  four  hundred  years  apart,  is 
very  nearly  as  great,  as  that  between  the  Psalms  of  Da- 
vid and  the  writings  of  Malachi,  though  between  these 
two  writers  was  an  interval  of  six  hundred  years,  em- 
bracing a  period  of  the  most  momentous  political  revo- 
lutions. The  simple  solution  of  both  facts  is,  that,  in  the 
East,  the  fashions  of  language  do  not  rapidly  change,t 

*  See  Numbers  xxxii.  38,  for  an  instance  of  such  an  alteration  being 
expressly  alleged. 

f  "  It  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  the  style  and  manner  of  Confucius  and 
his  immediate  followers  were  found  to  differ  very  little  from  those  of  the 
best  writers  of  the  present  day.  One  of  the  commentaries  consulted  by 
Mr.  Marshman  was  published  one  thousand  five  hundred  years  after  the 
death  of  Confucius,  and  the  other  much  later ;  yet  the  only  difference  he 
could  discover  between  them  and  the  original  consisted  in  the  former 
being  rather  less  concise.  '  Indeed,'  he  adds,  '  whatever  I  have  heard  or 
read  of  the  language,  tends  to  convince  me,  that  it  is  radically  the  same, 
whether  exhibited  in  the  conciseness  and  sublimity  of  the  ancient  sages, 
the  easy  and  copious  style  of  the  modern  writers,  or  the  familiarity  of  con- 
versation.' This  is,  perhaps,  the  most  extraordinary  instance  that  the 
world  has  exhibited  of  a  living  language  proved,  by  direct  and  positive 
testimony,  to  have  been  written  and  spoken  by  nearly  one  third  part  of 
the  human  race,  for  more  than  two  thousand  years,  without  undergoing 
any  material  change.  How  true,  and  at  the  same  time  how  strictly  ap- 
plicable to  the  Chinese,  is  the  observation  of  Dr.  Johnson,  that  '  the  Ian- 


84  AUTHENTICITY  OF   THE  [LECT. 

any  more  than  other  fashions  ;  and,  further,  that  a 
standard  work,  taking  the  lead  of  the  literature  ,of  a 
nation,  or  doing  more,  as  the  Law  of  Moses  did  for 
a  long  time,  and  almost  constituting  the  literature  of 
a  nation,  fixes  its  forms  of  speech  for  ages. 

Turning  from  the  supposed  adverse,  to  the  favorable 
internal  evidence,  I  ask  a  Christian,  who  believes,  that 
whatever  professes  to  proceed  directly  from  a  benevo- 
lent God,  is  recommended  to  his  reception,  in  that  char- 
acter, by  its  apparent  strong  efficacy  to  subserve  the 
purposes  of  God  in  the  religious  improvement  of  his 
children,  to  observe  the  fitness  of  the  Law  of  Moses, 
to  exert,  and  the  fact  of  its  having  actually  exerted, 
such  an  influence.  This,  again,  opens  a  view,  which 
must  be  pursued  in  its  details,  as  we  advance  in  the 
reading  of  the  Pentateuch. 

Among  the  internal  evidences,  I  ought  not  perhaps  to 
omit,  though  I  would  not  confidently  urge,  the  evidence 
adduced  from  several  texts,  to  show  that  Moses  is  rep- 
resented in  the  Pentateuch  itself  as  its  writer.  It  is 
true,  that,  understood  as  they  have  been,  they  after  all 
prove  no  more  than  this ;  that  the  Pentateuch  was  the 
work  of  Moses,  if  honestly  written  by  any  one ;  that  it 
was  produced  either  by  him,  or  by  an  impostor ;  and  that 
thus  they  would  make  all  the  evidence  of  its  having  been 
written  with  good  design,  go  to  corroborate  the  opinion 
of  its  Mosaic  origin.  And  I  think  it  must  be  owned, 
that  there  is  great  uncertainty  in  an  argument,  which 
interprets  the  declaration  that  Moses  was  the  author  of 
certain  specified  passages,  into  a  claim  for  him  of  the 

guage  most  likely  to  continue  long  without  alteration  would  be  that  of  a 
nation  raised  a  little,  and  but  a  little,  above  barbarity,  secluded  from 
strangers,  and  totally  employed  in  procuring  the  conveniences  of  life.'" — 
Review  of  "Marshman's  Dissertation  on  the  Chinese  Language."  Quar- 
terly Review,  Vol.  v,  p.  401. 


IV.  ]  PENTATEUCH.  85 

authorship  of  the  whole  composition,  of  which  now  they 
make  a  part. 

The  style  of  the  Pentateuch  agrees  with  the  suppo- 
sition of  a  remote  age.  The  idioms  of  language  *  and 
the  rhetorical  representations  are  of  a  simple  character,t 

*  The  pronoun  Nin,  e.  g.  and  the  noun  ijo  are  used  as  feminines 
in  the  Pentateuch,  the  former  no  less  than  about  two  hundred  times. 
Gesenius  (Geschichte  der  Hebraischer  Sprache  und  Schrift,  §  31)  ad- 
mits both  to  be  archaisms,  Jahn  has  pursued  this  subject  very  diligently. 
Some  of  the  results  of  his  examination  are  exhibited  in  his  "  Introductio," 
&c.  §  3.  The  subject  is  said  to  have  been  treated  by  him  more  at  large 
in  two  posthumous  essays,  published  in  the  second  and  third  volumes  of 
"  Bengel's  Archiv  far  die  Theologie,"  a  work  which  is  not  within  my 
reach.  Jahn  affirms  (ibid.),  that  "there  are  no  foreign  words  to  be  found 
in  the  Pentateuch,  except  some  of  old  Egyptian  origin,"  and  of  these  he 
instances  several. 

t  The  following  argument,  extracted  by  Home  (Introduction,  Vol.  ii. 
p.  18,)  from  Bishop  Marsh's  "  Authenticity  of  the  Five"  Books  of  Moses 
Vindicated,"  loses  something  of  its  force,  through  the  too  confident  tone 
in  which  it  is  urged.  It  is  besides  of  that  nature,  that  some  familiarity 
with  the  original  writings  is  requisite,  before  one  can  admit  or  deny  its 
cogency.  I  can  only  say,  that,  after  much  time  passed  in  the  study  of 
these  writings,  it  has  to  my  mind  very  great  weight. 

"  It  is  an  undeniable  fact,  that  Hebrew  ceased  to  be  the  living  language 
of  the  Jews  during  the  Babylonish  captivity,  and  that  the  Jewish  produc- 
tions after  that  period  were  in  general  either  Chaldee  or  Greek 

It  necessarily  follows,  therefore,  that  every  book,  which  is  written  in  pure 
Hebrew,  was  composed  either  before  or  about  the  time  of  tlie  Babylonish 
captivity.  This  being  admitted,  we  may  advance  a  step  further,  and  con- 
tend, that  the  period  which  elapsed  between  the  composition  of  the  most 
ancient  and  the  most  modern  book  of  the  Old  Testament  was  very  con- 
siderable ;  or,  in  other  words,  that  the  most  ancient  books  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament were  written  a  length  of  ages  prior  to  the  Babylonish  captivity. 
No  language  continues  during  many  centuries  in  the  same  state  of  culti- 
vation, and  the  Hebrew,  like  other  tongues,  passed  through  the  several 
stages  of  infancy,  youth,  manhood,  and  old  age.  If,  therefore,  on  com- 
parison, the  several  parts  of  the  Hebrew  Bible  are  found  to  differ,  not 
only  in  regard  to  style,  but  also  in  regard  to  character  and  cultivation  of 
language  ;  if  the  one  discovers  the  golden,  another  the  silver,  a  third  the 
brazen,  a  fourth  the  iron  age,  we  have  strong  internal  marks  of  their 
having  been  composed  at  different  and  distant  periods.  No  classical 
scholar,  independently  of  the  Grecian  history,  would  believe  that  the 
poems  ascribed  to  Homer  were  written  in  the  age  of  Demosthenes,  the 
orations  of  Demosthenes  in  the  time  of  Origen,  or  the  commentaries  of 
Origen  in  the  days  of  Lascaris  and  Chrysoloras.     For  the  very  same  rea- 


86  AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  [  LECT. 

while  the  tone  and  structure  of  the  composition,  through- 
out, are  such  as  we  might  expect  from  a  man  engaged 
in  an  enterprise  like  that  which  it  describes.* 

An  argument,  which  strikes  me  as  of  great  weight, 
but  which  is  only  to  be  set  forth  in  an  examination  of 
the  details,  as  we  proceed,  is  that  furnished  by  the  ar- 
rangement of  the  materials.  The  work  is  written,  for 
the  most  part,  in  the  manner  of  a  journal,  as  Moses 
would  be  extremely  likely  to  write,  but  as  an  author 
composing  in  a  later  age  would  not  be.  Such  an  author 
would  record  the  laws  in  one  form,  as  he  found  them 
existing  in  the  shape,  which,  after  any  modifications,  they 
had  taken,  or  as  he  would  have  them  to  exist.  The 
Pentateuch  not  only,  in  connexion  with  laws,  records 
the  occasions  which  respectively  gave  rise  to  them  ; 
but,  in  later  passages,  it  repeals  laws  prescribed  in  ear- 
lier, or  changes,  or  abrogates  them,  a  course  in  which 
it  is  not  easily  conceivable  that  any  one  should  proceed, 
who  did  not  live  at  the  time  of  their  enactment,  re- 
peal, or  change.  Of  the  same  class  is  an  argument, 
which  may  be  drawn  from  such  passages  as  that,  for 
instance,  near  the  end  of  Exodus,  relating  to  the  con- 
struction of  the  tabernacle.  In  what  manner  should 
we  expect  a  writer  to  speak  of  that  edifice,  who  lived 

son  it  is  certain  that  the  five  hooks,  which  are  ascribed  to  Moses,  were  not 
written  in  the  time  of  David,  the  Psalms  of  David  in  the  age  of  Isaiah,  nor 
the  prophecies  of  Isaiah  in  the  time  of  Malachi.  But  it  appears  from  what 
has  been  said  above,  in  regard  to  the  extinction  of  the  Hebrew  language, 
that  the  book  of  Malachi  could  not  have  been  written  much  later  than  the 
Babylonish  captivity;  before  that  period,  therefore,  were  written  the 
prophecies  of  Isaiah,  still  earlier  the  psalms  of  David,  and  much  earlier 
than  these  the  books  which  are  ascribed  to  Moses." 

*  One  characteristic  is  thus  described  by  Jahn ;  "  The  order  of  discourse 
is  not  everywhere  the  most  convenient ;  it  frequently  runs  on  in  broken  and 
unconnected  fragments,  many  of  which  are  wound  up  with  distinct  con- 
clusions. All  this  shows  a  writer  distracted  by  a  multiplicity  of  busi- 
ness ;  writing  not  continuously,  but  with  frequent  interruptions,  and  in  the 
constant  anticipation  of  interruption."    Introductio,  Pars  2,  §  3. 


IV.]  PENTATEUCH.  87 

after  its  construction  ?  Should  we  entertain  any  doubt, 
that  he  would  confine  himself  to  describing  its  general 
arrangement  and  effect  ?  But  the  manner  in  which  it 
is  treated  in  the  passage,  to  which  I  refer,  is  of  -a  very 
different  character.  In  the  first  place,  the  most  minute 
directions  are  given  as  to  the  manner  of  its  construc- 
tion, as  one  would  give  an  order  to  mechanics  respect- 
ing a  work  for  which  great  solicitude  was  felt ;  and  then, 
with  the  same  particularity  of  detail,  it  is  related  how 
those  orders  were  executed.  I  am  at  a  loss  to  point  to 
any  principle  in  human  nature,  which  will  help  us  to 
account  for  such  a  composition,  proceeding  from  any 
other  person  than  one  so  situated  as  Moses  is  related 
to  have  been.* 

Further;  there  are  laws,  which,  if  I  may  so  speak, 
seem  to  breathe  the  desert  air ;  arrangements,  for 
which  there  was  no  apparent  necessity,  and  scarcely 
any  possibility  of  their  observance,  after  the  wanderings 
in  the  Arabian  wilderness  were  over.  I  believe  we 
shall  meet  with  not  a  few  such.  To  whom  does  it  not 
occur,  that  the  direction  to  the  males  of  the  nation  to 
assemble  three  times  in  every  year  had  its  first  occa- 
sion in  the  necessity  of  preserving  the  integrity  of  the 
people,  by  preventing  those  who  had  the  care  of  flocks 
and  herds  from  wandering,  in  their  nomadic  excursions, 
to  too  great  a  distance  from  the  central  camp  ? 

*  The  justness  of  the  remark  here  made  may  be  tested  by  a  comparison 
with  what  is  actually  said  on  the  subject  in  question  by  Josephus.  Re- 
specting the  laws,  that  writer  says,  (Antiq.,lib.  4,  cap.  8,  §  4,)  "  All  things 
are  written  [by  me]  as  he  left  them ;  nothing  being  added  for  the  sake  of 
ornament,  nor  which  Moses  did  not  leave.  But  I  have  made  the  inno- 
vation of  arranging  every  thing  agreeably  to  its  suhjed.  For  by  him  the 
things  written  were  left  without  arrangement,  just  as  he  had  obtained 
them  severally  from  God."  In  anotlier  place  (lib.  3,  cap.  6),  Josephus 
describes  the  tabernacle  ;  and  the  description  which  he  gives  is  precisely 
of  that  kind,  which,  as  above  intimated,  might  be  expected  from  a  writer 
of  any  age  subsequent  to  that  of  its  erection. 


*tv. 


88  AUTHENTICITY  OF  THE  [LECT. 

There  are  few  things,  perhaps,  in  the  Pentateuch, 
which  go  so  far  to  create  a  prejudice  against  the  sup- 
position of  a  supernatural  authority  in  its  writer,  as 
what  is  thought  the  rude,  anthropomorphitic  character 
of  some  representations  in  it  of  the  divine  Being.  That 
subject  is  not  yet  before  us.  I  touch  upon  it  no  further 
than  to  say,  that  such  representations,  as  far  as  they  do 
exist,  whatever  other  observation  they  may  call  for,  ai*e 
just  so  much  proof  to  us  of  the  early  origin  of  the  book 
containing  them.  Such  representations  have  clearly 
some  relation  to  the  views  of  a  rude  people.  They 
would  be  out  of  place,  if  prepared  for  the  comparatively 
refined  age  of  David,  or  Solomon,  or  Hezekiah.  Their 
character  is  scarcely  reconcilable  with  the  supposition 
of  their  having  had  any  such  late  source. 

There  is  a  remarkable  chasm  in  the  history  between 
the  book  of  Genesis  and  the  book  of  Exodus.  It  corre- 
sponds to  the  interval  between  the  time  of  Jacob  and  the 
time  of  Moses,  about  four  hundred  years.  How  is  this 
to  be  accounted  for,  on  the  supposition  of  a  late  origm 
of  the  books  ?  That  period,  the  period  of  the  sojourn 
of  the  Jews  in  Egypt,  enveloped  in  the  mists  of  a  for- 
eign region  and  an  ancient  time,  would  have  made,  to 
a  late  annalist,  precisely  the  fairy  land  of  legendary  his- 
tory. How  came  this  alone,  of  all  the  ages  between 
Abraham's  and  the  writer's  own,  to  be  wholly  omitted, 
when  we  should,  on  the  contrary,  expect  it  to  be  made 
peculiarly  prominent,  on  the  supposition  that  a  com- 
paratively modern  inhabitant  of  Palestine  was  the 
writer  ?  Why  was  it  not  filled  up  by  him  with  marvels, 
like  the  period  of  the  Judges  ?  I  think  that  the  ques- 
tion admits  of  no  plausible  reply.  On  the  supposition 
of  Moses'  authorship,  no  such  problem  is  presented. 
We  shall  see  the  reason  of  his  writing  the  history  of  his 
own  time,  and  of  those  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob  ; 


IV.]  PENTATEUCH.  89 

and  I  think  we  shall  see  that  there  was  no  like  reason, 
and  no  apparent  reason  whatever,  for  him  to  write  more 
particularly,  than  he  has  done  in  two  or  three  verses, 
of  the  generations  which  had  intervened  between  that 
of  Joseph  and  his  own. 

Once  more  (for  other  remarks  of  a  similar  charac- 
ter must  be  left  to  find  their  several  places  hereafter) ; 
I  see  not  how  any  one  can  imagine,  that  the  taste  of 
a  people  and  age,  capable  of  relishing  such  composi- 
tions, as,  for  instance,  the  Psalms  of  David,  and  the 
Prophecies  of  Isaiah,  could  have  offered  any  demand 
or  encouragement  for  such  relations  as  some  of  those 
in  the  early  part  of  Genesis.  For  myself,  as  far  as, 
from  the  contemporaneous  productions,  I  am  able  to 
form  any  conception  of  the  habits  of  thought  and  writ- 
ing of  those  later  times,  the  reference  of  the  first  book 
of  the  Pentateuch,  and  of  not  a  few  parts  of  the  others, 
to  those  times,  seems  to  me  no  less  than  an  anachron- 
ism of  the  most  palpable  description. 

I  do  not  pretend  to  have  treated,  in  this  lecture,  an 
argument  of  such  extent  as  the  Mosaic  origin  of  the 
Pentateuch.  I  have  scarcely  aimed  at  more  than  to  lay 
out  the  ground,  and  prepare  the  way  for  future  obser- 
vations. The  internal  evidence  will  be  brought  before 
us,  in  the  whole  progress  of  our  inquiries  respecting  the 
contents  of  these  five  books ;  while  to  the  external, 
contributions  will  be  obtained  from  many  of  the  more 
recent  Jewish  writings  (whether  canonical  or  not)  which 
are  to  come  under  our  view.  For  the  present,  I  con- 
clude with  the  remark,  that,  without  urging  the  external 
evidence  with  a  confidence  such  as  has  been  professed 
in  respect  to  it,  but  such  as  I  think  it  will  not  justify, 
it  yet  appears  to  me,  that  whatever  there  is,  favors  the 
commonly  received  opinion ;  and  that  it  is  substantially 
what  we  should  be  entitled  to  expect  on  the  supposi- 

VOL.    I.  12 


90  AUTHENTICITY   OF  THE   PENTATEUCH.         [LECT 


..r  ,■" 


tion  of  the  correctness  of  that  opinion,  the  actual  circum- 
stances hardly  admitting,  in  any  such  case,  of  more. 
The  internal  evidence  alleged  against  the  authenticity,  I 
conceive  to  be  based,  for  the  most  part,  on  mere  mis- 
apprehensions, while  that  in  its  favor  is  of  a  very 
weighty  kind  and  large  amount,  as  I  hope  we  may  see 
in  the  sequel  of  these  discussions.  I  make  no  separate 
questions,  at  present,  of  the  Mosaic  origin  of  the  books 
of  Genesis  and  Deuteronomy.  We  may  find  reason,  in 
the  sequel,  to  think,  that  the  existence  of  the  one  is 
scarcely  to  be  accounted  for,  except  by  regarding  it  as 
a  Preface,  or  of  the  other,  except  by  considering  it  as 
an  Appendix,  to  the  Law  contained  in  the  three  other 
books. 


a. 


v.]  EXODUS   II.  11.  — VI.  30.  9% 


LECTURE    V. 

EXODUS  II.   11.  — VI.  30. 

Pdrpose  of  the  Mosaic  Revelation.  —  Objection  to  it,  from 
THE  Limitation  of  its  Benefits.  —  Fitness  of  the  Publica- 
tion OF  A  Puke  Theologt,  however  Limited.  —  Discrimina- 
tion, A  Part  pr  the  Universal  Law  of  Providence.  —  The 
Mosaic  System  admitted  Proselttes,  —  Was  designed  for  the 
Ultimate  Good  of  Mankind,  —  Cannot  be  shown  to  have  been 
the  only  Ancient  Revelation.  —  Objection  to  it  from  its 
Rudeness  and  Imperfection. —  Unreasonableness  of  the  Ex- 
pectation that  whatever  proceeds  from  God  shall  be  Per- 
fect.—  The  Mosaic  System  was  accommodated  to  the  Minds 
which  it  was  to  address.  —  difficulties  attending  its  in- 
TERPRETATION. —  Remarks  on  Various  Passages  connected 
WITH  Moses'  Assumption  of  his  Office. 

I  BEGIN  my  remarks  on  the  contents  of  the  Old 
Testament,  at  the  point  where  Moses,  if  the  history 
be  his,  takes  up  the  narrative  upon  his  own  personal 
knowledge ;  the  previous  portion  of  his  work  relating 
to  what  he  could  only  have  known  through  information 
derived  from  others.  The  passage  before  us  records 
the  circumstances,  under  which  he  assumed  the  office 
of  revealing  to  the  Jews  a  religious  law,  and  guiding 
them  to  a  national  independence. 

And  here  is  the  proper  place  to  consider  what  was 
the  object  of  the  Mosaic  revelation,  and  to  maintain  the 
fitness  of  that  object,  as  deserving  to  be  regarded  by 
the  Divine  Being,  against  any  incredulity,  with  which, 
presented  in  its  general  statement,  it  may  be  viewed. 

That  object,  I  conceive,  is  correctly  stated  as  follows ; 
To  put  the  Jewish  people  in  possession  of  a  pure  the- 
ology, and  to  place  them  in  a  condition  to  preserve  it 


9SL  EXODUS   II.   11.  — VI.  30.  [LECT. 

themselves,  and  to  become  the  instruments,  in  good 
time,  of  communicating  it,  under  better  circumstances, 
to  the  rest  of  the  world. 

An -objection  naturally  occurs  to  the  limitation  of 
knowledge  so  valuable.  Why,  it  may  be  asked,  should 
so  desirable  a  revelation,  of  truths  of  which  the  whole 
idolatrous  world  stood  so  much  in  need,  be  limited  to  a 
single  nation,  and  that  a  nation  politically  so  msignifi- 
cant? 

I  might  reply,  first,  that  to  have  a  pure  worship  of 
God  ascend  but  from  one  corner  of  this  our  earth,  would 
seem,  as  far  as  we  may  judge,  to  be,  in  itself,  an  object 
suitable  to  be  accomplished.  When  such,  questions  are 
asked,  as  that  to  which  I  have  just  referred,  we  are 
apt  to  look  for  answers  involving  considerations  of  men's 
benefit  exclusively.  Without  laying  much  stress  upon 
the  thought,  (since  I  grant  that  it  connects  itself  with 
considerations,  which  we  are  litde  competent  to  discuss,) 
I  would,  however,  inquire  in  passing,  whether  this  ques- 
tion of  men's  greater  or  less  benefit,  is  in  fact  the  only 
question  in  the  case.  Is  it  not  an  intelligible,  and,  as  far 
as  we  may  reason,  a  probable  thing,  that,  as  an  indepen- 
dent object,  God's  honor  was  to  be  consulted  by  his 
worship  not  being  permitted  to  be  wholly  banished  from 
this  earth?  When  the  misguided  nations  were  doing 
homage  to  some  fooHsh  imagination  of  their  own  hearts, 
might  there  not  be  an  abstract  fitness,  regarding  alone 
the  relation  of  the  Divine  Being  to  the  worlds  he  has 
made,  requiring  that  the  knowledge  and  service  of  Hun 
should  not  be  allowed  to  be  utterly  excluded  from  this 
portion  of  his  universe  ? 

But,  secondly,  when  it  is  asked,  why  a  revelation,  if 
worth  communicating,  should  have  been  communicated 
to  the  Jews  alone,  and  other  nations  not  been  allowed 
to  partake  in  its  benefits,  I  reply,  that  this  is  a  question 


v.]  EXODUS  II.  11— VI.  30.  93 

to  which  we  have  no  right  to  expect  an  answer,  any 
further  than  an  answer  is  furnished  by  observation  on 
the  whole  course  of  divine  Providence.  We  might  as 
well  ask,  why  one  nation  enjoys  a  better  climate  than 
another ;  why,  among  individual  men,  there  are  native 
differences  of  talent  and  disposition;  why  one  man  is 
made  to  hve  under  a  government  which  oppresses  his 
mind,  and  another  under  social  influences,  which  give 
his  mind  scope  and  excitement;  why  one  man's  re-* 
ligious  interests  are  made  to  prosper,  from  the  first, 
under  exemplary  parental  care,  and  another  is  exposed 
from  his  infancy  to  all  sorts  of  moral  contamination. 
The  question  concerning  the  justice  of  such  inequalities, 
may  or  not  be  a  question  hard  to  answer ;  but,  such  as 
it  is,  it  relates  to  the  whole  acknowledged  course  of 
the  divine  administration,  and  accordingly  cannot,  with 
any  propriety,  be  made  a  ground  of  distrust  of  the 
divine  original  of  the  Jewish  system.  Undoubtedly,  it 
applies  as  much  to  Christianity  as  it  does  to  Judaism. 
But  it  applies  no  more  to  either,  than  it  does  to  all 
the  endless  variety  in  human  fortunes  and  condition. 
That,  which  is  seen  to  be  the  universal  method  of 
divine  operation,  certainly  cannot,  when  presented 
among  the  circumstances  of  a  supposed  revelation,  be 
urged  as  a  ground  of  objection  to  its  pretended  origin. 
That  there  should  be  a  difference  of  privilege  among 
different  nations,  is  but  one  instance  of  that  infinite 
variety  which  we  see  to  be  studied  in  all  the  works 
and  providence  of  God ;  nor  is  it  inconsistent  with  his 
justice,  inasmuch  as  it  remains  for  justice  ultimately  to 
make  the  requisite  allowance,  when  final  retribution 
comes  to  be  assigned.  If  the  order  of  the  divine 
government  was  not  to  be  deviated  from  in  this  in- 
stance, then  part  of  the  world  was  to  be  preferred  be- 
fore other  parts  ;  and,  had  the  preference  fallen  on  some 


94  EXODUS  II.   11— VI.  30.  [LECT. 

Other  nation  instead  of  the  Jews,  the  same  question 
would  still  have  remained  to  be  asked.  Yet  it  is  not 
necessary,  nor  fit,  to  suppose,  that  the  selection  of  the 
Jews,  for  the  distinction  they  enjoyed,  was  arbitrary. 
The  most  that  we  can  say  is,  that  we  do  not  know  the 
reasons  which  determined  the  Divine  Mind  in  making 
the  distinction.  Could  we  look  back  into  antiquity,  as 
a  more  complete  history  would  enable  us,  we  might, 

'perhaps,  see  some  such  reasons  in  the  capacities, 
character,  condition,  relations  of  this  particular  people. 
And  perhaps  we  might  not.  But  certainly  there  is 
nothing  to  surprise  us  in  our  being  unable  to  see  what 

,  it  was,  that  determined  the  Divine  Mind  to  such  a 
preference,  nor  does  it  raise  any  presumption  against 
the  fact  that  such  a  preference  was  actually  exer- 
cised. 

Thirdly ;  I  suggest,  that  preference  of  one  nation  was 
not,  in  fact,  in  this  instance,  exclusion  of  the  rest  of 
mankind.  Other  men,  to  whom  the  knowledge  of  the 
Mosaic  religion  might  come,  could  adopt  it,  if  they 
would.  It  made  express  provision  for  receiving  prose- 
lytes to  every  privilege  of  the  chosen  race;  and  we 
find,  both  in  its  earlier  and  later  history,  that  proselytes 
did,  in  fact,  receive  the  religion,  and  come  to  stand,  in 
respect  to  it,  on  the  same  footing  with  the  descendants 
of  Israel.  But,  much  more  than  this ;  the  institution, 
so  far  from  excluding,  in  any  sense,  the  mass  of  man- 
kind from  its  benefits,  was  expressly  designed  to  be 
ultimately  for  the  benefit  of  all  mankind,  by  being  an 
introduction  to  Christianity ;  by  preparing  the  way  for  a 
system,  which  mankind  in  their  existing  state  of  culture 
could  not  have  been  made  to  embrace,  without  some 
violence  done  to  that  free  agency  of  theirs,  which  Grod 
never  violates;  but  which,  through  the  preparation  of 
the  intervening  ages,  they  would  be  brought  into  a  con- 


v.]  EXODUS  II.  11.  — VI.  30.  95 

dition  to  receive.  Men  were  now  universally  bigoted 
to  idolatry.  To  reclaim  the  whole  ultimately  to  better 
views,  the  fittest  way  for  God,  who  always  works  by 
means,  to  adopt,  —  the  only  apparent  way  (I  would  say 
it  with  reverence)  to  secure  the  end  without  invading 
men's  free-will,  —  was  to  reclaim  first  a  portion  of  man- 
kind, by  subjecting  them  to  a  minute,  detailed,  (shall  I 
say,  technical  ?)  discipline,  only  capable  of  being  ad- 
ministered in  a  small  community.  Such  we  shall  find 
the  Jewish  system  to  have  been  ;  —  a  system  well 
adapted  to  train  one  community  to  the  profession  of 
religious  truth,  which,  when  they  were  established  in  it, 
they  would  be  fit  instruments  for  communicating,  in  an 
extended  and  spiritualized  form,  to  the  world.  And 
their  situation,  both  while  an  independent  and  a  subju- 
gated people,  favored  this  design.  At  one  time  (that  is, 
in  the  reign  of  Solomon,)  Judea  was  itself  a  great  power, 
having  extensive  relations  as  such ;  and  at  other  periods, 
the  people  were  successively  connected,  in  a  different 
relation,  with  the  four  great  empires  of  ancient  history, 
the  Babylonian,  the  Persian,  the  Macedonian,  and  the 
Roman ;  while,  at  all  times,  their  geographical  position, 
having  on  their  border  the  nation  which  carried  on  the 
commerce  of  the  world,  and  inhabiting  a  territory  which 
made  the  thoroughfare  of  whatever  intercourse  there 
was  by  land  between  the  three  continents,  favored  the 
dissemination  of  a  knowledge  of  their  sacred  institu- 
tions. 

Once  more ;  though  I  do  not  undertake  to  deny,  yet 
I  certainly  would  not  venture  to  assert,  that  the  ground 
of  all  this  questioning  is  solid ;  and  that  the  Jews  were 
the  only  people  in  antiquity  favored  with  a  super- 
natm*ally  revealed  religion.  Perhaps  the  most,  that  with 
safety  and  modesty  we  could  affirm  upon  the  sub- 
ject, is  this  ;   that  we  have  no  sufficient  evidence  to 


96  EXODUS  U.  11.— VI.  30.  [LECT. 

show,  that  any  other  nation  has  been  so  privileged.  If 
ever  any  other  people  did  receive  a  religious  system 
supernaturally  sent  from  God,  and  therefore  pure,  I  am 
as  ready  as  others  to  own,  that,  to  the  best  of  my 
knowledge  and  belief,  it  is  now  lost ;  since  I  know  no 
other,  which  can  produce  evidence  of  having  been  so 
sent  by  him.  But  this  is  not  proof,  that  he  never  did 
make  any  other  such  revelation.  When  he  does  make 
a  revelation,  I  conceive  that,  in  every  just  view  of  the 
case,  he  is  to  be  considered  as  committing  the  truths 
revealed,  like  any  other  gift,  to  the  care  of  human  con- 
scientiousness and  wisdom.  In  proportion  as  these  are 
wanting  to  their  trust,  the  truths  disclosed  (as  we  know 
from  the  history  of  Christianity  and  Judaism  them- 
selves) may  be  obscured,  and,  for  aught  we  are  au- 
thorized to  say,  may  eventually  be  wholly  lost.  God, 
having  bestowed  his  gifts,  will  not,  by  a  constant  mira- 
cle, continue  to  protect  them,  against  misuse  or  even 
forfeiture.  Christianity  was  so  corrupted  during  the 
dark  ages,  as  to  be  all  but  lost  for  the  time  being,  and 
to  be  apparently  in  danger  of  absolute  extinction.  It 
may  be,  that  some  other  system  or  systems,  adapted, 
in  their  respective  ways,  to  the  wants  and  condition  of 
other  nations  than  the  Jews,  were  revealed  m  remote 
antiquity,  which,  however,  have  been  in  time  so  crusted 
over  with  corruptions,  as  to  have  lost  all  the  appropriate 
signatures  of  truth.  Would  it  be  safe,  for  example,  to 
affirm,  that  the  Hindoo  faith  had  not  its  source,  however 
corrupted  and  ruined  now,  in  a  divine  revelation  ?  Some 
of  its  interpreters  say,  that  its  original  documents  teach 
a  perfectly  pure  and  rational  theology.*    If  it  be  so,  then 

•  I  refer  particalaTly  to  some  of  the  publications  of  that  extraordinary 
man,  the  late  Rammohun  Roy.  In  the  preface  to  his  translation,  pub- 
lished in  1816,  of  one  of  the  chapters  of  the  Ved,  he  said  of  that  book ; 
"The  unity  of  the  Supreme  Being,  as  the  Sole  Ruler  of  the  Universe,  ie 


v.]  EXODUS  II.   II.  — VI.  30.  97 

the  present  condition  of  that  system  will  hardly  prove, 
that  it  did  not  begin  in  an  express  revelation,  any  more, 
than  the  corruptions  of  Romanism  will  prove  the  same 
thing  concerning  Christianity.  If  that  representation  be 
well  founded,  then  the  most  that  can  be  positively  de- 
clared, is,  that  the  proofs  of  the  rightful  pretensions  of 
the  Hindoo  system  to  a  supernatural  character,  if  such 
ever  existed,  are  lost ;  and  that  the  original  truths  have 
been  so  overlaid  and  superseded  by  later  errors,  as  to 
be  no  longer  profitable  or  discernible.  At  all  events, 
the  most  that  I  find  myself  able  to  assert,  is,  that  I 
know  no  proof  of  any  other  religious  system,  except  the 
Mosaic  and  Christian,  having  been  ever  supernaturally 
revealed.  But  this  is  a  very  different  thing  from  assert- 
ing that  no  other  religion  ever  was  so  revealed ;  and  the 
latter  is  a  ground,  which  he  who  would  urge  an  argu- 
ment, founded  upon  it,  against  the  credibihty  of  the 
Jewish  system,  assumes  without  any  authority  whatever. 
So  much  for  any  supposed  antecedent  improbability 
in  a  revelation  (if  a  revelation  were  made)  being  limited, 
as  was  the  Jewish.  By  way  of  preparation  for  exam- 
ining fairly  the  provisions  of  that  system,  I  would  next 
say  a  few  words,  in  a  general  way,  upon  a  subject, 
which,  in  its  details,  will  frequently  come  before  us  in 
the  investigation.  A  prejudice  is  apt  to  be  excited 
against  the  Jewish  system  by  a  certain  character  of 
rudeness  which  it  obviously  bears,  when  compared  with 

plainly  inculcated,  and  the  mode  of  worshipping  him  particularly  directed. 

The  doctrine  of  a  plurality  of  gods  and  goddesses is  not  only 

controverted,  but  reasons  assigned  for  its  introduction,"  &c.  This  publi- 
cation gave  rise  to  a  controversy,  in  the  course  of  which  appeared  his 
"  Defence  of  Hindoo  Theism,"  and  "  Second  Defence  of  the  Mono- 
theistical  System  of  the  Veds,"  more  fully  maintaining  the  view,  that 
"  the  theology  of  the  Vedas  is  the  doctrine  of  one  self-existent,  omnipo- 
tent God;"  and  these  were  followed  by  translations  of  other  parts  of  the 
Brahminical  books,  professedly  executed  for  the  establishment  of  the 
same  fact 

VOL.  I.  13 


98  EXODUS  II.   11.  — VI.  30.  [LECT. 

Christianity,  or  judged  agreeably  to  the  habits  of  think- 
ing which  prevail  at  the  present  day.  I  ask,  whether 
it  is  just,  or  in  any  degree  philosophical,  to  give  way 
to  such  a  prejudice.  Would  any  one  defend  it  on  the 
ground,  that  whatever  proceeds  from  God,  must  needs 
be  perfect?  Nothing  can  be  more  false.  The  Infinite 
Mind,  incessantly  active,  studies  (so  to  speak),  and  de- 
lights in,  an  infinite  variety ;  and  of  course,  where  there 
is  a  variety  of  works  and  administrations,  (which  itself 
is  a  surpassing  excellence  of  the  whole  system  taken 
together,)  there  must,  of  necessity,  be  more  excellence 
in  some  forms  of  these,  and  less  in  others.  To  say 
that  all  should  be  equally  complete,  would  be  to  say 
that  there  ought  to  be  the  dulness  and  inoperativeness 
of  uniformity,  or  rather  of  identity,  instead  of  the  beauty 
which  characterizes,  and  the  multiform  relations  and 
mutual  influences  arising  out  of,  the  variety  which  we 
find  existing. 

If  our  earth  were  the  only  dwelling-place  of  beings 
capable  of  religion,  then  it  might  perhaps  be,  that  the 
divine  attributes  would  insure  its  having  a  religious 
administration  of  the  highest  possible  perfection.  But 
making,  as  it  appears  to  do,  but  a  small  part  of  an  in- 
finitely varied  universe,  I  should  feel  authorized  to  in- 
sist, if  my  argument  required  it,  that  we  had  no  more 
right,  on  the  ground  of  the  divine  attributes,  to  demand, 
for  our  earth,  in  any  period  of  its  existence,  an  ab- 
stractly perfect  religious  administration,  than  we  should 
have  a  right,  on  the  same  ground,  to  demand,  that  an 
earthly  insect  should  be  a  perfect  creation  of  almighty 
skill,  endowed  with  all  intellectual  and  moral  attributes, 
or  to  refuse  to  believe  in  its  existence,  if  it  was  less 
than  such  a  creation.  That  may  clearly  be  the  best 
possible  thing,  as  part  of  a  great  system,  —  as  fitly  con- 
tributing to  the  endless  variety,  —  which,  judged  only 


v.]  EXODUS  II.  11.  — VI.  30.  99 

by  itself,  would  possess  no  such  character.  God  looks 
at  every  thing  as  part  of  the  universal  system.  We 
cannot  do  this.  But  we  ought  to  be  extremely  back- 
ward to  condemn  that  which  may  have  become  subject 
to  our  suspicions,  only  through  our  own  narrowness 
of  view ;  —  through  our  own  partial  supply  of  the  need- 
ful facts  for  arriving  at  a  just  estimation. 

But  to  go  so  far  is  by  no  means  necessary  for  our 
argument.     I  suggest,  again,  that  the  perfection  of  any 
instrument  is  its  complete  adaptation  to  its  use.      To 
affect  the   mind   of  man,  if  God  condescends  to  use 
those  means  which  are  consistent  with  the  exercise  of 
its  free  will,  he  will  address  himself  to  it  in  a  manner 
adapted  to   its  existing  state  of  cultivation.      He  will 
address  it,  in  other  words,  in  the  language,  which,  tak- 
ing it  as  it  is,  will  make  it  understand  and  feel.     He 
will   quicken  it  through  the  instrumentality  of   its  ac- 
customed associations.     He  will  convey  instruction  to  it 
through   those    channels,   to  which  it  has    been   used. 
We  may  think  much  of  our  refinement  at  the  present 
day.     But  what  great  difference  can  we  imagine  there 
would  be,  between  the  degree  of  accommodation  which 
it  would  be  necessary  for  the  Divine  Mind  to  make  to 
our  poorly  furnished  and  cultivated  minds,  if  it  should 
condescend  directly  to  address  them,  and  that,  which, 
for  the  same  purpose,  was  practised  in  the  case  of  the 
ancient  IsraeUtes  ?     If  God  is  pleased  to  convey  a  mes- 
sage directly  from  himself,  the  form  which  it  will  take 
will  be  determined  by  nothing  except  regard  to  the 
manner  in  which  it  will  best  do  its  office ;  and  what  that 
manner  is,  will  depend  on  the  condition  of  that  under- 
standing for  which  the  message  is  designed.     To  ad- 
dress the  Jews  in  Moses'  time  in  the  same  forms  of 
communication  which  might  now  be  suitable  to  be  used 
with  us,  would  be  quite  as  unfit,  as  to  reverse  that 


IM  EJXODUS  II.   11.  — VI.  30.  [LECT. 

course,  and  address  Christians,  in  a  comparatively  civil- 
ized age,  in  the  manner  which  we  find  employed,  in 
Moses'  revelation,  with  the  Jews. 

We  ought  to  consider  more  than  we  do,  that  the 
very  supposition  of  communication  on  the  part  of  the 
Divine   Being,  with   any  of   his  creatures,  implies  ac- 
commodation on  his  part  to  their  state  of  preparation 
for  the  receiving  of  communications  from  him.     Other- 
wise there  is  no  effectual  communication.     The  mind, 
addressed  in  a  language  which  it  does  not  understand, 
is  not  addressed.     Doubtless  God  addresses  superior 
intelhgences  in  a  different  way  from  that,  in  which  he 
will  address  his  earthly  creatures  in  any  stage  of  their 
progress.     Doubtless  men,  in  a  future  improved  state, 
may  be    addressed  in  a   different  manner  from    that 
which  could  now  be  used  with  us.     So  the  contempo- 
raries of  Jesus  Christ  could  bear  to  be  addressed  in  a 
different  manner  from  the  debased  and  barbarous  Jews 
of  Moses'  time.     But,  so  far  from  suspicion  properly 
attaching  to  the  way,  in  which  God  is  represented  to 
have  addressed  these  latter  persons,  on  account  of  its 
not  being  the  way  most  conformed  to  our  own  habits  of 
taste  and  speculation,  the  very  fact  of  its  having  a  pe- 
culiar conformity  to   theirs,  as  far  as  we  are  able  to 
detect  that  fact,  ought  to  pass   with  us  for  a  strong 
reason,  corroborating  the  authenticity  of  the  narrative. 
I  add  another  remark,  preliminary  to  our  entrance  on 
the  examination  of  the  Pentateuch.     It  is,  that  students 
of  Scripture  are   apt   to  fall  into  a  great  error,  as  to 
what  they  may  reasonably  expect  from  labors  in  inter- 
pretation, in  consequence  of  the  common,  but  entirely 
unfounded  habit,  of  looking  at  all  the  books  in  the  Bibli- 
cal collection,  whether  of  the  Old  or  the  New  Testa- 
ment, from  the  same  point  of  view.    They  seem  some- 
times to  expect  to  arrive  as  uniformly  at  complete  and 


v.]  EXODUS   II.   11.  — VI.   30.  101 

satisfactory  explanations  of  questions  arising  from  the 
Jewish  books,  as  from  the  Christian ;  and,  when  they 
fail  to  do  so,  they  seem  to  think  it  a  ground  for  objec- 
tion against  the  former.     I  beheve,  that  the  admission  of 
any  prejudice  arising  from  such  a  cause  will  be  seen, 
on  a  moment's  reflection,  to  be  altogether  indefensible. 
We  must  not  expect  to  interpret  the  Jewish,  as  we 
interpret  the  Christian  records.     The  latter  have  come 
down  to  us  in  a  language,  which  we  learn  with  accuracy 
from  a  variety  of  books,  treating  of  a  variety  of  sub- 
jects, and  constituting  perhaps  the  most  copious  literature 
which  ever  existed.     They  have  come  down  to  us  from 
times,  of  which,  considering  their  distance,  we  know 
extremely  well  the  customs  of  society,  and  the  habits 
of  thought.     We  are  acquainted,  from  ample  sources, 
with  the  contemporaneous  and  preceding  history,  and 
we  have  almost  contemporaneous  expositions,  which  are 
not  without  their  value.     The  Pentateuch,  if  we  assign 
its  date  correctly,  is  much  older  than  any  monument 
of  profane  literature.     It  comes  to  us  from  the  infan- 
cy of  society.     Language,  always  an  imperfect  instru- 
ment, especially  when  only  written,  was  then  in  almost 
its  earliest  immaturity.    The  force  of  the  whole  mass  of 
idiomatic  expressions,  on  which  grammars  and  lexicons, 
from  their  nature,  give  us  little  light,  is  lost  to  us,  except 
so  far  as  parallel  passages  may  sometimes  help  us  to 
recover  them  ;  nor  only  lost,  but  as  often  as,  for  want 
of  knowing  that  an  idiom  was  intended,  we  attempt  to 
analyze  a  sentence  by  established  analogies  of  the  lan- 
guage, we  are  unavoidably  led  into  a  positive  miscon- 
ception of  the  sense.     For  want  of  contemporaneous 
history,  we  know  very  little,  circumstantially,  of  the  state 
of  surrounding  opinions ;  and  when  a  law  is  prescribed, 
or  a  sentiment  advanced,  which  had  reference  to  these, 
we  may  be  entirely  at  a  loss  for  its  import,  or,  if  we 


J02  EXODUS   11.  11.  — VI.  30.  [LECT. 

will  be  bolder  than  our  ignorance  warrants,  we  may 
entirely  misconceive  and  misstate  it.  Apart  from  merely 
idiomatic  forms  of  speech,  the  artifices  of  language  on 
a  larger  scale,  including  all  that  belongs  to  the  freedom 
of  figurative  exhibition,  and  much  more  than  is  com- 
monly ranked  under  that  head,  vary  their  significance,  in 
an  arbitrary  manner,  in  diflferent  ages  and  regions  of  the 
world  ;  and  in  Hebrew  literature,  what  is  to  furnish  us 
with  that  explanation,  needful  in  such  cases,  which  is 
only  furnished  in  the  literature  of  other  nations,  by  a 
large  collation  and  comparison  of  instances  of  their  oc- 
currence 1 

I  might  enlarge  greatly  on  this  topic.  But  I  sup- 
pose, that  the  general  statement  which  I  make,  speaks 
sufficiently  for  itself ;  we  have  no  right  to  expect  to 
interpret  the  old  Hebrew  Scriptures,  as  we  might  inter- 
pret more  modern  books.  We  have  no  right  to  be 
disappointed,  certainly  none  to  be  discouraged  or  of- 
fended, when  our  efforts  after  a  satisfactory  interpreta- 
tion are  sometimes  foiled.  When^  we  have  extracted 
from  a  passage,  by  what  we  may  think  a  strict  exposi- 
tion of  its  language,  a  sense  which  seems  liable  to 
objections  on  external  grounds,  we  have  no  sufficient 
right  to  insist  positively  that  that  sense  is  the  true  one. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  every  satisfactory  solution, 
which  does  reward  our  diligent  inquiry,  of  any  thing 
which  at  first  view  caused  us  embarrassment  and  doubt, 
is  an  added  ground  for  the  presumption,  that,  had  we 
but  a  like  sufficient  knowledge  of  facts  in  respect  to 
difficulties  which  still  continue  to  perplex  us,  those  diffi- 
culties too  would  disappear. 

In  the  passage  before  us,  we  are  told  that  Moses, 
having  been  outraged  by  the  treatment  which  he  saw 
one  of  his  countrymen  receiving  from  an  Egyptian,  and 


I 


v.]  EXODUS   II.  11.  — VI.   30.  103 

having  put  the  wrong-doer  to  death,*  was  obliged  to 
flee  from  Egypt,  and  found  a  shelter  with  a  priest  or 
chief  man  of  Midian,  a  region  in  the  north  part  of  Arabia, 
whose  daughter  he  married.  Here,  after  forty  years,t 
while  feeding  his  flock  on  a  solitary  mountain,!  he  re- 
ceived a  divine  summons  to  return  to  Egypt,  and  under- 
take the  dehverance  of  the  Israelites.  He  was  empow- 
ered and  directed  to  perform  certain  miracles,  to  satisfy 
his  nation  that  he  was  divinely  authorized  to  undertake 
the  enterprise ;  and,  after  repeated  expressions  of  his  own 
reluctance  and  sense  of  incapacity  to  engage  in  a  ser- 
vice so  arduous  and  hazardous,  and  after  being  direct- 
ed to  associate  his  brother  Aaron  with  him  in  its  exe- 
cution, he  returned  to  Egypt  to  enter  on  the  appointed 
office.  Here  the  request  of  Moses  and  Aaron  to  the 
king,  to  permit  the  people  to  go  a  three  days'  journey 
into  the  wilderness  to  sacrifice  by  themselves,  was  de- 
nied, and  hardships  were  inflicted  on  them,  to  punish 
them  for  the  alleged  indolence  which  prompted  the  pro- 
posal. Moses,  repeatedly  discouraged  by  the  harshness 
of  Pharaoh,  and  the  discontents  of  the  people,  who  now 
looked  on  him  as  the  cause  of  the  increased  severity  of 
their  lot,  was  repeatedly  reassured  by  divine  communi- 
cations, till  at  length  he  received  directions  to  extort  the 
consent  which  had  been  refused. 

One  of  the  first  things  which  attracts  our  attention 

*  I  think  It  may  be  inferred  from  Acts  vii,  25,  that  this  act  of  Moses 
was  declared  by  tradition  to  have  been  intended  for  a  signal  of  insurrec- 
tion to  the  Jews ;  so  that,  if  the  tradition  were  well-founded,  it  seems  that 
Moses  already  entertained  tlie  purpose  of  exciting  them  to  attempt  the 
recovery  of  their  freedom. 

■j-  That  is,  if  the  same  tradition  is  to  be  taken  for  authority.  See 
Acts  vii.  30. 

I  It  is  called  (iii.  1.)  "the  mount  of  God,"  either  as  indicating  its 
height,  this  being  a  form  of  the  Hebrew  superlative,  or  because  the  Law 
was  afterwards  published  there.     Compare  iii.  12,  xviii.  5,  xix.  3  et  seq. 


104  EXODUS  U.  11— VI. -30.  [LECT. 

here  is,  the  representation  of  the  manner  in  which 
Moses  received  the  commission  to  his  office.  "  The 
angel  of  the  Lord,"  we  are  told,  "  appeared  unto  him  in 
a  flame  of  fire  out  of  the  midst  of  a  bush;"*  that  is, 
as  I  understand,  the  medium  of  divine  agency,  to  attract 
his  notice,  was  itself  a  bush,  miraculously  inflamed, 
without  consuming.f  His  attention  being  thus  fixed, 
he  was  next  addressed  in  an  audible  voice,  summon- 
ing him  to  stand  still  and  lend  a  reverential  ear;  and 
then  the  purpose  of  the  marvellous  appearance  was  de- 
clared to  him.  If  it  was  fit,  that  he  should  be  sum- 
moned to  such  an  errand,  I  submit,  that,  as  far  as  we 
may  humbly  judge,  the  manner  in  which  he  was  in- 
trusted was  such  as  it  was  worthy  of  the  Divine  Being 
to  select.  The  solemn  solitude  of  the  mountain,  the 
preternatural  light,  the  intelligibleness  and  impressive- 
ness  of  the  articulate  voice,  (for  that  it  was  literal  sound 
which  conveyed  the  sense,  and  not  an  internal  impres- 
sion only,  I  take  to  be  proved  by  the  fifth  verse,)  all 
were,  if  we  may  say  it,  suitable  adjuncts  of  such  a 
scene.  God  may  doubtless  convey  his  meaning  to 
the  mind,  which  he  designs  supernaturally  to  enlighten, 
as  well  without  spoken  words  as  with  them.  In  this 
case,  as  has  been  remarked,  it  appears  that  he  employed 
the  latter  method,  and  it  was  fully  paralleled  in  the  New 
Testament  times. J  In  other  cases  which  will  come 
under  our  view,  we  may  perhaps  find  cause  to  believe, 
that  the  method  was  different,  and  that  the  language, 
"  God  spake  to  Moses,"  and  the  like,  is  used  for  divine 

•  I  believe  that  an  "  angel  [or  messenger]  of  the  Lord,"  'ijNSn,  iyytXtt, 
■will  be  found  to  mean  in  Scripture,  any  instrument  or  medium  of  divine 
communication  or  agency ;  and  that  accordingly  the  word  does  not  deter- 
mine the  instrumentality  spoken  of  in  any  case,  to  be  either  inanimate, 
sentient,  human,  or  superhuman.  Compare  Psalm  civ.  4 ;  Exod.  xiv.  19 ; 
2  Chron.  xxxvL  15 ;  Isaiah  xlii.  19,  xliv.  26 ;  Malachi  il  7. 

\  Exod.  iii.  2.  t  See  Matthew  iii.  17,  xvii.  5;  John  xii.  28. 


T.]  EXODUS  II.  n.  — VJ.  30.  105 

communications  received  by  Moses  in  any  way,  the 
form  of  the  sentence  being  but  an  adaptation  to  the 
simple  Eastern  fashion  of  narrative. 

If  the  reluctance  of  Moses  to  undertake  his  allotted 
office  should  excite  in  us  any  surprise,  I  believe  that 
emotion  will  be  only  momentary.  There  is  no  evidence 
of  his  having  been  a  person  of  decided. courage,  certainly 
none  of  his  having  possessed  a  character  of  great 
enterprise  and  ambition  ;  and  the  difficulties  and 
hazards  of  the  undertaking  were  evidently  great,  and 
known  by  no  one  to  be  so,  better  than  by  himself. 
And  if  any  reader  be  disposed  to  think  that  the  divine 
command  would  necessarily  preclude  any  temporary 
feeling,  or  submissive  expression,  of  such  reluctance, 
let  him  remember,  that  the  state  of  mind  which  he  un- 
reasonably blames  is  no  other  than  that  evinced  by 
our  Lord  himself,  under  circumstances  of  some  simi- 
larity.* All  the  remonstrances  of  Moses,  if  so  we  are 
to  call  them,  I  conceive  are  fidy  and  satisfactorily  classed 
under  the  same  head,  as  expressions  of  natural  emotion, 
in  the  form  of  prayer,  to  him  with  whom  it  remained  to 
grant  or  to  deny.f 

*  See  Matthew  xxvi.  39. 

t  The  present  is  as  convenient  a  place  as  any  that  may  occur  for  a  few 
words  respecting  that  form  of  dialogue  between  God  and  Moses,  which  we 
find  the  latter  frequently  inserting  in  his  narrative,  and  which  may  have 
occasioned  us  some  surprise.  I  might  perhaps  be  justified  in  dismissing 
it  with  the  remark,  that  it  is  one  of  the  simple  rhetorical  artifices,  by 
which,  in  antiquity,  when  language  was  not  even  the  partially  philosophi- 
cal instrument,  that  it  has  now  become,  the  narrative  style  was  diversified 
and  enlivened.  And  I  might  compare  it,  thus  regarded,  to  the  habit  of  the 
classical  historians,  of  inserting  set  speeches  in  the  body  of  their  works, 
which  they  ascribed  to  those  whose  actions  they  were  recording,  as  a 
convenient  device  for  letting  the  reader  into  their  supposed  state  of  mind 
at  the  time.  But  I  prefer  to  take  a  diiferent  view.  Whoever  believes 
that  Moses  was  supernaturally  commissioned,  believes  that  there  was 
communication  between  God  and  him.  Now  with  whomsoever  I  com- 
municate, whether  the  instrument  of  communication  be  spoken  or  written 
VOL.    I.  14 


106  EXODUS  II.   11— VI.  30.  [LECT. 

The  question,  related  to  have  been  asked  by  Moses, 
in  the  thirteenth  verse  of  the  third  chapter,  "  When  I 
come  unto  the  children  of  Israel,  and  shall  say  unto 
them,  the  God  of  your  fathers  hath  sent  me  unto  you, 
and  they  shall  say  to  me,  *  What  is  his  name,'  what  shall 
I  say  unto  them  ? "  was  probably  prompted  by  a  dis- 
trust which  crossed  his  mind,  under  the  bewildering 
circumstances  of  this  extraordinary  scene.  He  wished 
to  satisfy  himself  that  the  being,  with  whom  he  was 
conversing  in  this  remote  wild,  knew  the  name  of  the 
national  Deity  of  the  Hebrews.  His  question  is  ex- 
pressly answered  in  the  fifteenth  verse ;  "  Thus  shalt 
thou  say  unto  the  children  of  Israel,  *  Jehovah,  God  of 
your  fathers,  the  God  of  Abraham,  and  oT  Isaac,  and  of 
Jacob,  hath  sent  me  unto  you.' "  But  first,  in  the  four- 
teenth verse,  the  derivation  of  that  name  is  brought  to 
view,  in  a  sense  the  most  apposite  to  the  occasion,  indi- 
cating that  the  immutability  which  it  denotes  is  now  to 
be  manifested,  in  Jehovah's  fulfilment  of  his  ancient 
promises  to  the  patriarchs  of  the  race.* 

language,  or  the  language  of  other  conventional  signs,  or  something 
different  from  all,  it  is  fit  that  I  should  say,  he  spoke  to  me,  and  /  answered 
him.  No  one  would  hesitate,  for  example,  to  describe  thus  a  conversation 
with  a  deaf  and  dumb  man.  The  communications  between  God  and 
Moses,  which  of  course  occurred,  (on  the  supposition  of  the  divine  illumi- 
nation of  the  latter,)  may  have  taken  place  in  some  ineffable  way.  And 
then  there  was  no  language  fitter  to  use  concerning  them,  than  that  which 
Moses  has  employed.  If  we  had  the  account  of  Jesus'  ministry  from 
himself,  instead  of  his  disciples,  does  it  not  seem  to  every  one  in  the 
highest  degree  probable,  tiiat  this  is  the  phraseology  in  which  his  inter- 
course with  Heaven  would  have  been  described?  (Compare  John  viii.  26, 
28 ;  xii.  50.)  Into  this  form  is  actually  thrown  what  many  expositors 
consider  the  internal  conflict,  recorded  (in  all  probability,  in  his  own 
words)  in  Mattliew  i v.  1-11.  Compare  also  Acts  xxiL  17  -  21,  —  And  afler 
all,  who  knows  that  audible  language  was  not  the  medium  of  tlie  com- 
munications in  question  ?  Why  should  it  not  be  ?  We  use  it  in  our 
common  addresses  to  God ;  why  should  not  Moses,  in  his,  of  an  extra- 
ordinary character .'  Human  beings  addressed  Moses  in  words ;  why 
should  not  God,  if  he  saw  fit  to  address  him  in  any  way .' 

*  7Y\rr   from  n^n  the  verb  of  existence.   Such  is  the  Masoretic  point- 


v.]  EXODUS   II.   11.  — VI.  30.  107 

In  the  fourth  chapter  is  a  brief  account  of  Moses' 
return  to  Egypt,  to  enter  on  his  mission,  having  re- 
ceived the  power  of  authenticating  it  by  miraculous 
manifestations,  and  been  permitted  to  take  his  brother 
Aaron,  as  an  associate  in  the  enterprise.*  Upon  the 
latter  arrangement,  considered  as  having  been  made  in 
consequence  of  Moses'  own  remonstrances,  and  to 
overcome  his  diffident  reluctance  to  the  task,  it  may  be 
well  to  observe,  that  there  is  nothing  to  surprise  us 
in  a  statement  of  God's  conforming  his  method  of  ac- 
tion to  the  state  of  mind  of  his  human  instrument,  nor 
of  his  having  done  this  after  expostulation  from  Moses, 
instead  of  before.  On  the  contrary,  the  encouraging 
effect  on  the  latter's  mind,  of  seeing  that  he  was  in-« 
dulged,  was,  as  far  as  we  may  judge,  an  effect  suitable  to 
be  produced.     But,  in  the  present  instance,!  it  does  not 

ing ;  but  whether  it  indicates  the  true  ancient  pronunciation,  is  uncertain. 
The  Jews  have  a  conceit,  that  the  structure  of  the  word  indicates,  in  a 
peculiar  manner,  the  idea  of  eternity ;  the  preformative  '  being  in  Hebrew 
the  grammatical  characteristic  of  the  future,  the  inserted  1  of  the  partici- 
ple (which  in  Hebrew  expresses  present  time),  and  the  final  n  of  the 
preterite   of  this  class  of  verbs.     And   to  this  idea   there  is  probably 
allusion  in  the  Apocalypse  (i.  4,  8  ;  iv.  8  ;  xi.  17.)    It  is  likely,  however, 
that  the  pointing  is  but  an  adoption  (with  a  slight  change,  having  refer- 
ence to  the  different  character  of  the  initial  letter,)  of  that  of  the  word 
'jnx    which  the  Jews,  from  a  superstition  of  theirs,  always  read,  when 
nin'  occurs  on  the  page,  unless  both  words  come  together,  and  then,  for 
euphony's  sake,  they  point  the  latter  niH',  and  read  it  D'TISn,   God. 
The  material  circumstance,  however,  is  sufficiently  clear ;  viz.  the  deriva- 
tion of  Pin'  from  r\'Tj,  and  its  consequent  expression  of  the  idea  of 
self-existence,  elemili/,  immntableness.    The  idea,  as  is  remarked  above,  is 
distinctly  premised  in  the  fourteenth  verse,     The  verbs  rendered  in  our 
version  "  I  am  that  I  am,"  in  the  Septuagint,  "  1  am  he  who  is,"  [iy^  tlfti 
i  *»,]  and  in  tlie  Arabic,  simply  "  I  am  the  eternal,"  are  in  the  future  form ; 
but  the  use  of  the  tenses  in  the  Hebrew  is  so  free,  that  some  grammarians 
do  not  scruple  to  denominate  them  both  "aorists,"  and  the  rendering, 
« I  have  been  [or  am]  what  I  shall  be,"  would  be  unexceptionable. 

*  iv.  1  -  17.     For  remarks  on  questions  arising  out  of  iii.  18,  02,  see 
pages  131, 136. 

t  See  iv.  14,  27. 


108  EXODUS  II.  11.  — VL  30.  [LECT. 

appear,  that,  in  the  association  of  Aaron  with  his  brother, 
there  was  actually  what  we  might  call  a  change  ot"  the 
divine  purpose.* 

The  greater  cruelties  recorded,  in  the  fifth  chapter, 
as  having  beien  inflicted  upon  the  Israelites,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  solicitation  which  they  had  made,  I  con- 
ceive that  we  are  to  regard  as  having  been  providen- 
tially directed,  to  excite  them  to  a  stronger  wish  to 
escape  from  their  oppressors.  The  genealogy  of  Moses 
and  Aaron,  towards  the  close  of  the  passage  before  us,t 

*  The  sense  of  the  words  rendered  in  our  version,  "  I  toill  harden  his 
heart,  that  he  shall  not  let  the  people  go,"  (iv.  21,)  would  be  better  ex- 
pressed by  the  other  form  of  our  English  future,  "  I  shall  harden,"  &c., 
the  latter  form  being  simply  declarative  of  something  known  to  be  future, 
while  the  former  includes  the  additional  idea  of  its  coming  to  pass  in 
consequence  of  a  purpose  entertained  by  the  speaker.  The  sense  I  take 
to  be  simply  this  ;  I  know  that  Pharaoh,  instead  of  being  shaken  from  his 
purpose,  as  he  should  be,  by  what  I  shall  do,  will  but  be  led  to  manifest 
a  more  obdurate  obstinacy.  —  The  incident  related  in  verses  24-26, 
when  divested  of  its  figurative  language,  (a  kind  of  language  in  which  the 
remembrance  of  an  exciting  incident  naturally  clothes  itself,)  I  understand 
to  have  been  as  follows.  On  his  way  into  Egypt,  Moses  was  seized  with 
alarming  illness.  His  Midianitish  wife,  who  had  hitherto  withholden  her 
son  from  being  a  subject  of  the  Israelitish  rite  of  circumcision,  supposed, 
in  the  spirit  of  the  time,  that  her  husband's  danger  was  a  vindictive  divine 
visitation  for  this  disobedience,  or  a  warning  to  desist  from  it,  now  that 
Moses  was  to  be  placed  at  the  head  of  his  people.  She  hastened,  there- 
fore, to  propitiate  the  offended  Deity ;  and  believing  her  act  to  have  been 
available  for  her  husband's  restoration,  she  said  to  him,  "  Behold  thee  a 
husband  won  back  to  me  by  blood." 

f  The  words  "  By  my  name  Jehovah  was  I  not  known  to  them,"  (vi.  3.) 
as  commonly  understood,  contradict  several  parts  of  the  book  of  Genesis ; 
e.  g.  XV.  2  ;  xxiv.  40 ;  xxvi.  25 ;  xxviiL  13.  But  there  is  no  such  inconsis- 
tency in  the  original.  The  words  DnS  'i^J-^lJ  kS,  are  well  translated, 
"  I  was  not  discloaed,  manifested,  to  them ; "  that  is,  in  the  sense  of  the 
name  I  took.  God  was  known,  revealed,  to  the  patriarchs,  as  "  God  Al- 
mighty," through  his  mighty  interpositions  in  their  behalf;  but  not  as 
Jehovah,  "  The  Immutable,"  because  for  them  he  had  not  yet  fulfilled  his 
promise  respecting  the  establishment  in  Canaan.  In  that  character,  the 
character  Jehovah,  the  character  of  continuity,  permanency,  unchangea- 
bleness,  he  was  now,  in  the  ministry  of  Moses,  to  appear.  Compare 
verses  6,  7,  8,  where  the  sense  is  disguised  by  the  rendering  "  the  Lord," 


v.]  EXODUS   II.   11.  — VI.  30.  1Q9 

is  appropriately  given  in  connexion  with  their  entrance 
on  their  public  trust.  The  fact  that  it  is  introduced  by 
a  concise  sketch  of  the  lines  of  Reuben  and  Simeon, 
while  no  other  tribes  are  mentioned,  is  naturally  ex- 
plained by  the  consideration,  that  in  any  comprehensive 
genealogical  hst,  to  which  Moses  should  have  recourse 
for  a  register  of  the  lineage  of  Levi,  his  own  ancestor, 
he  would  find  it  preceded  by  those  of  Reuben  and 
Simeon,  the  only  older  sons  of  Jacob. 

instead  of  the  proper  name,  "  Jehovah."  —  "I  will  give  it  you  [the  land  of 
Canaan]  for  an  heritage,''^  (verse  8,)  not  merely  for  a  place  of  pilgrimage, 
as  it  was  to  your  fathers,  nor  for  you  to  be  but  tenants  in  it,  as  you  have 
been  on  the  Egyptian  soil. 


110  EXODUS  VII.   J.  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 


LECTURE    VL 

EXODUS    VII.    L  — XII.  51. 

Purpose  of  the  Mosaic  Miracles  in  Egypt.  —  Reason  *of  the 
Repetition  of  such  Acts.  —  Explanation  of  Pharaoh's  Con- 
duct.—  Character  of  the  Egyptian  Magicians,  and  of  their 
Acts.  —  Amount  and   Extent   of  the  Miraculous   Operation 

RECORDED.  —  OBSERVATIONS     Ofli     THE     SEVERAL    PlAGUES.  —  INSTI- 
TUTION OF  THE  Passover.  —  Exodus  from  Egypt. 

We  shall  obtain  aid  towards  a  satisfactory  view  of 
the  portion  of  the  Mosaic  history  at  which  we  have  now 
arrived,  by  attending  to  the  preliminary  consideration 
of  the  purpose,  for  which  the  miracles  herein  recorded 
were  designed.  If  we  should  suppose,  that  they  were 
intended  for  the  conversion  of  all  who  witnessed  them, 
Egyptians  as  well  as  Israelites,  to  a  true  belief,  we 
should  assume  that,  for  which  there  is  no  authority 
whatever,  and  which  would  throw  great  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  the  interpretation.  They  were  intended  to 
produce  effects  upon  Jews  and  Egyptians  both;  but 
not  the  same  effect.  Their  purpose  was,  to  satisfy  the 
latter,  that  the  national  God  of  the  Jews  was  able  to 
protect  his  people  against  their  power,  and  so  to  extort 
a  consent  from  them  for  the  Jews  to  leave  their  terri- 
tory. And  to  the  Jews,  on  the  other  hand,  these 
miracles  were  designed  to  prove,  that  they  would  be 
safe  in  placing  themselves  under  the  guidance  of  Moses, 
who  was  the  instrument  in  working  them.  These 
miracles  did  not  propose  to  prove,  even  to  the  Jews, 
that  their  national  God  was  the  only  God.  This 
was  matter  of  subsequent  revelation.  Still  less  were 
they  designed  to  prove  this  to  the  Egyptians ;  for  to 


VI.]  EXODUS   VII.  1.  — XII.  51..  Ill 

them  the  religious  system  now  introduced  was  not  so 
much  as  offered.  The  sole  object  was  to  emancipate 
the  Israelites,  and  bring  them  into  a  condition  where 
the  new  system  might  be  presented  to,  and  adopted 
by  them. 

The  remark  which  has  been  made,  will  serve  to 
explain  the  character  of  some  of  these  miracles.  As 
the  Egyptians  were  to  be-  brought  to  understand,  that 
they  were  to  hope  for  no  effectual  protection  on  the  part 
of  their  false  national  gods  against  the  God- of  Israel, 
when  he  had  resolved  to  release  his  people,  some  of 
these  prodigies,  at  least,  (as  the  corruption  of  the  Nile, 
and  the  destruction  of  cattle,)  were  aimed  directly 
against  the  Egyptian  divinities  ;*  and  perhaps  we  should 
see  the  same  remark  to  hold  equally  good  of  all,  if  we 
had  but  a  better  acquaintance  with  the  Egyptian  my- 
thology. 

If  the  question  be  asked,  what  reason  there  could 
have  been  for  such  a  repetition  of  miracles,  since  it 
certainly  was  in  the  power  of  the  Divine  Being  to 
accomplish  that  result  by  a  single  act,  which  the  history 
represents  to  us  as  the  consequence  of  many,  I  appre- 
hend that  the  history  itself  presents  a  consideration, 
which  will  furnish  the  reply  desired.  "  The  Lord 
said  unto  Moses,  *  Pharaoh  shall  not  hearken  unto 
you,  that  my  wonders  may  be  multiphed  in  the  land  of 
Egypt ; ' "  that  is,  the  consequence  of  the  first  wonders 
not  producing  a  decisive  impression  upon  his  mind,  was, 
that  others  should  be  used  to  create  it ;  and  that  these, 
by  their  number  and  variety,  might  make  a  narrative 
fitted  the  more  to  affect  the  minds  of  the  IsraeUtes  in  all 

*  See  Exodus  xii.  12.  Apis,  Mnevis,  and  Onuphis  were  represented 
by  the  ox ;  Amun  by  the  ram ;  Mendes  by  the  goat.  The  subject  is 
largely  treated  in  the  last  four  books  of  Jablonski's  "  Pantheon  iEgyptio- 


112  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 

succeeding  times.*  That  this  very  purpose  was  in  view, 
we  read  in  another  place.f  "1  have  hardened  Pha- 
raoh's heart,  and  the  heart  of  all  his  servants,  (that  is, 
I  have  so  forbearingly  wrought,  that  their  hearts  have 
remained  hard,)  that  I  might  show  these  my  signs 
before  him,  and  that  thou  mayest  tell  in  the  ears  of  thy 
son,  and  of  thy  son's  son,  what  things  I  have  wrought 
in  Egypt,  and  my  signs-  .which  I  have  done  among 
them ;  that  ye  may  know  that  I  am  the  Lord."  Both 
the  accumulation  of  exhibitions  of  miraculous  power, 
and  their  variety,  would  cause  their  impression  to  be 
the  greater,  both  on  the  minds  of  witnesses,  and  of 
those  to  whom  they  should  be  related.  It  was  fit  that 
the  miraculous  power  of  Moses,  as  miich  as  that  of  our 
Lord,  should  be  exerted  in  various  forms.  Some  would 
be  more  struck  with  one  mode  of  exhibition,  others 
with  another.  Persons  who  might  doubt  of  the  reality 
of  one,  and  suspect  that  their  senses  ,had  been  de- 
ceived, would  cease  to  doubt  when  another  was  pre- 
sented. Apart  from  the  mere  suitableness  to  work 
conviction,  the  attention  of  one  person  would  be  more 
awakened,  his  imagination  more  excited,  his  feelings 
more  kindled  by  one  wonder,  and  those  of  another  by 
another.  And  even  on  any  one  mind,  the  impres- 
sion of  the  power  which  had  been  working  would 
be  the  stronger,  on  account  of  the  diversified  and  con- 
tinued manifestations  which  it  had  taken.  Moreover, 
as  the  Israelites  and  Egyptians  were  both  numerous 
communities,  it  may  be  presumed,  that,  as  the  succes- 
sion of  those  miracles,  which  were  of  limited  extent, 
went  on,  the  number  of  spectators  was  continually 
increasing. 

Again  ;  it  will  be  asked,  how  it  is  possible  that  Pha- 
raoh should  have  held  out  against  such  signal  manifesta- 

•  xi.  9.  t  ^'  1.  2. 


VI.]  EXODUS   VII.   1.  — XII.  51.  113 

tions  of  divine  power ;  that  he  should  have  failed  to  own 
such  acts  to  be  miracles,  if  they  were  actually  done; 
or  that,  owning  them  to  be  miracles,  he  should  venture 
to  persist  in  opposition  to   the  power  which  wrought 
them.     The  question,  I  think,  proceeds  upon  the  obvi- 
ously erroneous  ground,  that  Pharaoh  is  to  be  supposed 
to  have  reasoned  like  a  monotheist  of  the  present  day. 
It  was  impossible  that  he  should  so  reason.     Like  all 
men  of  that  time,  he  believed  in  many  deities.     He 
believed  that  other  nations,  as  well  as  his  own,  had 
patron  divinities,  who  were  able  to  suspend  the  laws  of 
nature.     That  the  God  of  Israel  could  do  so,  was  no 
matter  of  surprise  to  him,  nor  any  satisfaction  to  his 
mind,  that  he  ought,  and  would  be  compelled,  to  do 
what  the  God  of  Israel  required ;  for  he  kept  hoping  to 
the  last  moment  that  his  own  national  gods  would  inter- 
fere, and  by  a  display  of  superior  power  protect  him. 
Who  shall  say,  that  an  ancient  polytheist,  like  Pharaoh, 
would  or  should  feel  bound  to  obey,  simply  because  a 
miracle  was  wrought,  when  good,  and  wise,  and  mod- 
ern Christians,  lay  it  down  solemnly,  in  philosophical 
treatises,  that  a  miracle  is  not  alone  proof  of  the  inter- 
position of  God,  but  that  it  may  be  wrought  by  superior 
evil  beings?*     At  first,  Pharaoh  appears  not  to  have 
been  satisfied,  that  the  extraordinary  acts  of  Moses  were 
done  in  the  use  of  any  other  than  natural  means,  a 
view  which  he  was  very  likely  to  take  up,  from  having 
witnessed  the  extraordinary  feats  of  the  jugglers  of  his 
court ;  and  to  strengthen  this  impression  appears  plainly 
enough  to  have  been  the  object  of  those  of  this  pro- 
fession, who  performed  an  imitation  before  him  of  the 
first  muscles  of  Moses.    Had  these  persons  pretended 
to  be  the  instruments  of  carrying  on  a  contest  of  real 

*  See  Doddridge's  Lectures,  Vol.  i  pp.  373  et  seq. 
VOL.   I.  15 


114  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 

miracles  on  the  part  of  the  gods  of  Egypt,  against  the 
God  of  Israel,  then-  course  then  clearly  would  have  been 
to  pretend  to  remove,  by  the  power  of  their  divinities, 
the  plague,  which  Moses  had  inflicted  by  the  power  of 
Jehovah.  To  add  to  that  plague  would  have  been  not  at 
all  to  their  pui'pose.  This,  however,  they  do;  and  it 
was  entirely  to  their  purpose,  if,  as  I  conceive,  the  issue 
they  joined  was,  whether  what  Moses  did  was  done 
by  natural  or  by  supernatural  means.  That  it  was  by 
natural  means,  is  what  I  understand  them  to  have  as- 
serted ;  and  they  took  the  fit  method  to  convince  Pha- 
raoh, that  their  assertion  was  true.  "  Moses  has  no  com- 
mission even  from  the  God  of  Israel,"  I  understand  them 
to  have  said.  "It  is  true  he  works  wonders.  But  we, 
without  any  superhuman  aid,  can  do  the  like."  This 
they  attempted,  in  three  instances,  producing  an  imita- 
tion in  each,  which,  under  the  circumstances,  we  shall 
see,  might  not  have  been  difficult,  to  persons  skilled  in 
their  arts  of  imposture.  When,  in  the  fourth  instance, 
they  had  to  own  that  they  could  do  nothing  of  the  kind, 
theu-  exclamation,  "  This  is  the  finger  of  God,"  [or,  of 
the  gods]  sufficiently  shows  what  it  was  which  hitherto 
they  had  denied. 

When  the  jugglers  gave  up  the  contest,  which  hither- 
to, for  the  purpose  described,  they  had  carried  on,  and 
owned  that  the  Israelitish  God  was  working,  this  was 
not  an  acknowledgment  decisive  of  the  further  course 
of  Pharaoh.  It  remained  for  him  to  await  the  issue  of 
a  contest,  which  his  superstition  would  naturally  lead 
him  to  expect,  between  the  God  of  Israel,  who  wanted, 
as  Moses  had  declared,  the  worship  of  his  people,  and 
the  gods  of  Egypt,  who,  he  believed,  were  able  to  pro- 
tect their  own  country,  and  who,  he  continued  to  hope, 
would  at  length,  though  late,  interpose  to  do  so.  Ac- 
cordingly, we  find  him  described  as  temporizing ;  giving 


VI.]  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  115 

way,  and  making  fair  promises,  when  disaster  was 
recent  and  heavy,  and  then  suffering  his  hopes  from 
his  own  divinities  to  revive*  That  such  should  be  the 
state  and  progress  of  his  own  feelings,  is,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  nothing  different  from  what  we  might  expect; 
and  also  it  is  to  be  presumed,  that  the  influence  of  his 
counsellors  would  be  employed  to  the  same  end.  —  We 
are  carefully  to  remember,  that  the  object  of  the  mira- 
des  was  not  to  make  Pharaoh  a  worshipper  of  Jeho- 
vah. Neither  Moses  nor  Aaron  is  represented  as  mak- 
ing any  proposition  to  him  of  that  kind.  They  only 
demand  of  him  to  "let  Israel  go."  The  repetition  of 
their  miracles  at  last  compelled  him  to  see,  that  his 
gods,  for  whatever  reason,  did  not  intend  to  interpose 
in  his  behalf.  This  did  not  lead  him  to  give  up  his  be- 
lief in  their  existence.  There  was  no  reason  why  it 
should.  It  only  led  him  to  conclude  that  he  had  in- 
curred their  displeasure ;  or  that,  for  some  other  cause, 
it  was  their  will  to  allow  the  Jews  to  be  dismissed. 

And  here  again,  we  have  an  answer  to  a  question, 
which  may  naturally  enough  have  arisen  in  some  minds, 
why  Pharaoh,  incensed  as  he  was  against  Moses  and 
Aaron,  did  not  vent  his  displeasure  by  taking  their  lives. 
With  his  views,  after  ascertaining,  as  he  had  done,  by 
the  confession  of  his  own  retainers,  that  it  was  by  no 
arts  of  legerdemain,  that  they  had  occasioned  him  this 
disturbance,  but  simply  by  the  power  of  another  nation's 
god,  he  could  not  expect  to  obtain  relief  in  any  such 
way.  He  would  rather  fear,  that,  by  such  violence,  he 
would  provoke  further  judgments  at  Jehovah's  hands, 
from  which,  as  his  recent  experience  had  shown,  he 
could  not  rely  on  his  own  gods  to  defend  him. 

Before  I  leave  this  course  of  remark,  I  would  sug- 
gest, in  a  word,  a  bearing,  which  it  seems  to  me  to 
have  on  the  question  of  the  genuineness  of  this  portion 


•%-i!- 


116  *     EXODUS  VIL  1.  — XH.  51.  [LECT. 

of  the  history.  Supposing  it  to  have  been  written  in 
Moses's  time,  we  can  understand  why  Jehovah  is  pre- 
sented, in  the  course  of  these  transactions,  only  in  the 
character  of  the  national  God  of  the  Jews.  As  yet  he 
had  been  revealed  in  no  higher  character.  The  rest 
was  to  come,  after  the  emancipated  people  were  in  a 
condition  to  receive  it.  It  did  come  speedily.  Jeho- 
vah ^vas  exhibited  as  possessing  unparticipated  divine 
attributes ;  the  sole  maker  and  governor  of  heaven  and 
earth ;  God  alone,  no  other  existing  anywhere  beside 
him.  So  he  was  known  by  all  the  Jewish  people  who 
remained  faithful  to  their  law,  in  periods  subsequent  to 
this  age.  And  I  find  it  extremely  difficult  to  conceive 
of  a  Jew,  in  any  period  after  the  foundation  of  the 
Jewish  polity,  throwing  himself  back  so  completely,  in 
imagination,  into  remote  times,  as  to  conceive  of  Jeho- 
vah in  the  far  inferior  character  (corresponding  to  the 
partial  revelation,  which  alone  had  yet  been  made,)  m 
which  this  passage  presents  him. 

I  remarked  above,  that,  if  we  had  a  better  acquaint^ 
ance  with  the  state  of  things  and  of  opinions  in  Egypt 
at  this  time,  particularly  with  the  Egyptian  mythology, 
it  is  likely  that  we  should  be  able  to  explain,  better 
than  now,  the  reason  of  the  selection  of  the  particular 
miracles  recorded,  to  affect  the  national  mind ;  and,  so 
far  as  this  seems  to  us  probable,  just  so  far  any  pre- 
possession against  these  miracles,  having  reference  to 
their  character,  will  be  removed.  I  observe,  further, 
that  there  can  be  httle  doubt,  that  perplexities  now 
occurring  would  have  been  removed,  had  the  account 
been  given  in  greater  detail,  a  detail  which  was  un- 
necessary for  contemporaries,  and  the  want  of  which  it 
is  likely  would  be  long  supplied,  to  some  extent,  by 
traditional  interpretation.  In  some  cases,  which  I  shall 
have  occasion  to  specify,  misapprehensions,  which  we 


VI.]  EXODUS   VII.  1— XII.  51.  117 

should  almost  certainly  take  up  from  language  employed 
in  the  early  part  of  a  narrative,  are  in  fact  corrected  by 
something  naturally  introduced  in  a  subsequent  part, 
without  any  apparent  consciousness  in  the  writer  that 
it  was  necessary  to  explain  what  had  first  been  said. 
In  such  cases,  we  learn  that  we  had  interpreted  erro- 
neously what  first  came  under  our  view,  only  in  conse- 
quence of  something  being  added  which  serves  us  for  a 
commentary  upon  it.  The  presumption  is,  that,  in  other 
cases,  had  the  narrative  been  further  pursued,  light 
would  have  been  thrown  on  what  now  is  affected  with 
some  obscurity. 

With  these  preliminary  remarks,  I  proceed  to  a 
review  of  some  of  the  circumstances  attendant  upon 
the  emancipation  of  the  Jews  from  Egypt.-  Moses  is 
told,  that  repeated  miraculous  interpositions  will  be 
necessary  to  overcome  the  reluctance  of  Pharaoh  to 
the  dismission  of  his  slaves;  and  that  by  resorting  to 
such,  and  so  effecting  the  designed  result,  their  divine 
protector  will  show  that  he  is  Jehovah,*  that  is,  that  he 
is  immutably  true  to  his  word.  In  the  fulfilment  of 
their  mission,  Moses  and  Aaron  accordingly  presented 
themselves  before  Pharaoh,  and,  the  latter,  to  authenti- 
cate their  authority,  throwing  down  his  rod  before  the  . 
king,  it  became  a  serpent.  "  Then  Pharaoh,"  as  we  are 
told  in  the  English  translation,  "also  called  the  wise 
men  and  the  sorcerers ;  and  the  magicians  of  Egypt, 
they  also  did  in  like  manner  with  their  enchantments."! 
In  short,  here  began  a  contest  between  Moses  and  the 
Egyptian  w  ise  men,  which  was  continued  through  two 
other  stages  of  Moses'  acts,  and  the  nature  of  which  it 
belongs  to  us  to  investigate. 

The  question  here  presented  is  simply  this.    Are  the 

•  Exod.  vii,  5.  tvii.lL 


118  EXODUS  VII.  1— XII.  51.  [LECT. 

Egyptian  "  sorcerers,"  as  our  version  calls  them,  repre- 
sented as  persons  capable  of  suspending  or  subverting, 
through  any  agency,  the  established  laws  of  nature; 
or  is  the  language  such,  that  we  are  to  esteem  them 
to  have  been  merely  jugglers,  as  we  well  understand 
the  meaning  of  that  word  ?  Is  it  intimated  to  us,  that 
they  actually  performed  acts  similar  to  those  per- 
formed by  Moses,  or  that  they  cheated  the  senses  of 
spectators  by  the  appearance  of  performing  them  ? 
Were  they  real  wonder-workers,  in  a  fair  interpreta- 
tion of  the  narrative,  or  were  they  impostors  ? 

The  former  theory  has  been  to  a  great  extent  held ; 
and  by  Jewish  and  Christian  commentators  different 
views  have  been  presented,  in  order  to  maintain  its  cred- 
ibility. Some  have  understood,  that  the  sorcerers  actu- 
ally performed  these  works,  through  the  £dd  of  evil 
supernatural  agents  ;  a  view  which  has  no  foundation  in 
any  thing  which  we  know  of  superior  evil  beings,  and  is 
obviously  opposed  to  all  just  theory  of  miracles.  Others 
have  conceived  the  Divine  Being  to  have  empowered 
the  sorcerers  supematurally  to  perform  these  acts,  in 
order  that  the  final  victory  of  Moses  over  them  might 
be  still  more  signal ;  an  exposition,  which  one  need  not 
scruple  to  call  altogether  unsatisfactory  and  puerile. 
The  fact  is,  that  there  is  no  ground  whatever  for  the 
violent  supposition,  which  is  thought  to  call  for  these 
explanations.  If  there  be  any  such  ground,  it  is  to  be 
found  either  in  the  words  used  by  the  historian  in 
speaking  of  the  Egyptian  "  sorcerers "  and  then*  acts, 
'  indicating  the  character  which  he  ascribed  to  them,  or 
else  in  the  acts  themselves  which  are  recorded,  they 
being  of  a  nature  to  exceed  human  power.* 

•  I  believe  that  this  matter  was  first  put  upon  its  proper  footing  by 
Hugh  Farmer,  in  bis  excellent  "  Dissertation  on  Miracles."  The  passage 
before  us  is  treated  at  length  in  chap.  4,  §  1. 


VI.]  EXODUS   VII.   1.  — XII.  51.  119 

No  such  inference  can  be  drawn  from  the  words, 
used  in  the  narration,  respecting  the  acts,  or  those  who 
did  them.  The  agents  are  denominated  by  Hebrew 
words,  translated  "  wise  men,"  "  sorcerers,"  and  "  ma- 
gicians." *  The  phrase  "  wise  men,"  which  is  Uterally 
and  exactly  rendered,  is  certainly  as  fit  to  be  used  of 
persons  expert  in  arts  of  legerdemain,  as  of  persons 
invested  with  supernatural  control  over  the  powers  of 
nature;  and  the  etymology  of  the  two  other  words  is 
such,  that  the  closest  rendering  of  them  would  be  by 
the  names,  "  mutterers,"  and  "  scribes."  Again ;  their 
acts  are  called,  in  our  version,  "  enchantments."  But 
the  original  describes  them  by  a  term,  the  meaning  of 
which  is  simply,  covered^  or  secret  arts,  an  expression 
in  the  highest  degree  applicable  to  acts  of  simple  im- 
posture.f  I  may  add,  that,  had  the  names  been  (^s 
they  are  not)  such  as  indicate,  in  their  essential  meaning, 
any  supernatural  endowments,  nothing  is  more  common 
than  to  apply  such  terms  to  those  who  claim  such  en- 
dowments, though  the  justice  of  their  claim  be  not 
allowed.  A  person,  who  should  speak,  at  the  present 
day,  oi  fortune-tellers,  would  not  be  understood  as  him- 
self recognising  those  of  whom  he  spoke,  in  the  charac- 
ter indicated  by  the  original  composition  of  that  word, 
but  simply  as  describing  the  individuals  in  question  by 
the  character  to  which  they  made  pretension. 

Again ;  no  inference  is  to  be  drawn,  favorable  to  the 
supernatural  character  of  the  acts  of  the  Egyptian  wise 
men,  from  the  nature  of  the  acts  ascribed  to  them.  This 
we  are  to  see  in  looking  at  them  singly.  We  shall  have 
occasion  to  observe  that  they  were,  in  each  case,  very 
imperfect  imitations  of  the  acts  of  Moses ;  being,  by  the 
necessity  of  the  circumstances,  exhibited  on  a  much 

*  D-non,  D'SE'Dr?,  D''??p"in. 

t  D'tpriS  ;  the  Vulgate  renders  the  word  arcana  quadam. 


120  EXODUS  VII.   1.  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 

more  limited  scale ;  and  that,  considering  the  advantage 
of  preparation,  which  was  actually  in  each  instance 
possessed,  as  long  as  the  attempts  continued  to  be 
successful,  there  was  nothing,  in  either,  which  was  not 
entirely  within  the  compass  of  those  arts  of  deluding 
the  senses,  which  this  profession  makes  its  study.  Of 
course,  I  do  not  pretend  to  describe  the  methods  of 
operation,  which,  in  each  instance  w^ere  resorted  to ; 
for  it  is  the  very  nature  and  essence  of  the  art  to  con- 
ceal its  processes.  But,  if  it  appears  that  nothing  is 
related  to  have  been  done  by  these  wise  men  of  Egypt, 
which  can  be  affirmed  with  any  confidence  to  be  be- 
yond the  resources  of  legerdemain,  this  is  all  which  it 
can  be  thought  necessary  to  show. 

The  rod  of  Aaron  having  been  changed  to  a  serpent, 
in  Pharaoh's  view,  the  contest  between  the  Jewish 
leaders  and  the  courtiers  of  that  prince  began.  Pha- 
raoh, we  are  told,  "called  the  wise  men  and  the  sor- 
cerers."* It  may  be  presumed,  that  in  summoning 
them  to  his  presence,  he  informed  them  what  it  was 
that  Aaron  had  done,  and  that  they  were  expected 
to  do.  At  all  events,  the  intelligence  of  what  had 
taken  place  could  scarcely  fail  to  reach  them,  and  thus 
they  had  opportunity  to  prepare  themselves  for  an 
imitation  of  the  wonder  which  had  been  wrought.  The 
taming  of  serpents,  so  as  to  conceal  them  about  the 
person,  and  substitute  them,  by  a  sudden  movement, 
for  something  held  in  the  hand,  is  well  known  to  be,  in 
the  East,  at  this  day,  one  of  the  most  common  arts  of 
jugglery.  This  was  what  was  done  in  the  present  in- 
stance. The  mere  appearance  of  a  transformation  of  a 
rod  into  a  serpent,  by  an  adroit  and  sudden  concealment 
of  the  one,  and  production  of  the  other,  is  what  no  one 
probably  would  affirm  to  be  an  impossible  delusion  of 

*  vii.  11. 


VI.]  EXODUS    VII.   1.  — XII.  51.  121 

the  senses.  "  They  also  did  in  hke  manner  with  their 
enchantments,  for  they  also  cast  down  every  man  his 
rod,  and  they  became  serpents.  —  But  Aaron's  rod 
swallowed  up  their  rods."  This  was  something  which 
they  had  not  come  prepared  for ;  and  accordingly  we 
do  not  read  that  they  attempted  either  to  prevent  it,  or 
to  follow  it  with  any  imitation. 

But,  it  ^will  perhaps  be  said,  the  narrative  declares, 
that  the  wise  men  "  also  did  in  like  manner  with  their 
enchantments";  and,  in  this  expression,  the  historian 
is  to  be  understood  as  representing  them  to  have  done 
the  same  act  as  Aaron.  No  such  sense,  however, 
is  conveyed  by  the  language.  To  "  do  in  hke  man- 
ner," is  not  necessarily  to  repeat ;  it  is  simply  to  imi- 
tate, to  copy,  whether  in  the  way  of  actual,  or  of  appar- 
ent repetition.  If  this  is  not  already  sufficiently  plain, 
it  will  be  made  so  by  a  comparison  with  the  eighteenth 
verse  of  the  following  chapter,  where  we  find  the  same 
language,  and  there  evidently  not  in  the  sense,  which 
it  has  been  thought  to  bear.  "The  magicians  did  so 
with  their  enchantments,  to  bring  forth  gnats  ;  but  they 
could  not"  —  And  this  might  be  dwelt  upon  as  one 
of  the  several  instances,  occurring  in  this  connexion, 
in  which  a  hint,  subsequently  given,  without  any  ap- 
parent purpose  of  throwing  light  on  expressions  pre- 
viously used,  compels  us  to  abandon  an  interpreta- 
tion of  these,  which  otherwise  would  be  not  unnatural. 
And  I  am  tempted  here  again  to  enlarge  on  the  thought, 
that  such  instances  admonish  us  not  to  urge  general 
expressions  to  their  utmost  possible  significance,  even 
when  no  such  subsequent  explanations  happen  to  occur. 
But  I  trust  that  enough  has  been  said  to  make  this 
principle  familiar. 

The  wonder  wrought  in  Pharaoh's  view  did  not  sub- 
due his  purpose ;  and  he  is  threatened  with  a  second, 

VOL.    I.  16 


122  EXODUS  VII.   1.  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 

no  longer  of  a  harmless  character.  In  the  execution 
of  this  warning,  Moses  and  Aaron  present  themselves 
before  him;  "and  he  [Moses]  lifted  up  the  rod,  and 
smote  the  waters  in  the  river  [the  Nile],  in  the  sight 
of  Pharaoh,  and  in  the  sight  of  his  servants,  and  all  the 
waters  that  were  in  the  river  were  turned  to  blood."* 

And  here  a  question  is  brought  before  us,  which  I 
suppose  appears  to  most  minds  as  of  prominent  impor- 
tance, in  the  interpretation  of  this  whole  narrative.  It 
relates  to  the  amount  and  extent  of  miraculous  opera- 
tion. We  say,  the  only  object  contemplated  was,  to 
affect  Pharaoh's  mind,  because  on  his  will  depended 
the  dismission  of  the  Israelidsh  people ;  and,  this  being 
so,  we  ask  ourselves,  what  necessity  was  there  for  ex- 
tending the  severity  of  a  judgment  over  a  whole  nation  ? 
What  occasion  was  there,  for  instance,  to  distress  a 
.whole  people  with  thirst,  for  the  purpose  merely  of  sub- 
duing the  obduracy  of  its  monarch  ?  I  suppose  that 
nothing  goes  further  towards  creating  incredulity  in 
respect  to  the  Mosaic  miracles,  than  the  thought  to 
which  I  here  refer.  And  I  would  do  something  towards 
removing  the  impression,  which  it  makes. 

I  shall  not  content  myself  with  saying,  that,  in  the 
established  order  of  the  divine  government,  the  mind  of 
a  ruler  is  generally  reached  through  the  fortunes  of  his 
subjects.  It  is  true,  however,  and  a  truth  which  ought 
carefully  to  be  weighed  in  its  bearings  on  the  relation 
before  us,  that  the  principle,  here  brought  to  view,  is 
distinctly  recognised  in  all  the  analogies  of  human  his- 
tory, l^  in  these  instances  of  supernatural  agency, 
God  did  address  the  mind  of  the  monarch  through  an 
influence,  exerted  on  it  by  liis  subjects  in  consequence 
of  the  unhappiness  of  a  condition  into  which  they  had 
been  brought,  it  is  no  more  than  he  is  constantly  doing 

•  vii.  20. 


VI.]  EXODUS   VII.   1.  — XII.  51.  123 

in  his  common  providence,  when,  for  instance,  a  prince, 
living  in  seclusion  and  luxury,  is  induced  to  consent  to 
a  peace,  because  his  people,  on  whom  alone  the  burden 
falls,  are  impatient  of  the  sacrifices  and  disturbances 
of  war.  The  wisdom  and  righteousness  of  such  a 
divine  economy  it  does  not  belong  to  this  place  to 
vindicate,  though  it  admits  of  the  most  satisfactory 
vindication.  It  is  enough  to  say,  what  all  will  admit, 
that  such  is  the  divine  economy  in  respect  to  natural 
events ;  and,  being  so,  no  prejudice  can  attach  to  the 
credibility  of  events  alleged  to  be  supernatural,  because 
they  also  are  marked  with  this  character.  We  ought 
to  expect  to  see  one  course  of  divine  action  impressed 
with  the  same  signatures,  which  we  trace  on  another, 
proceeding  from  the  same  source. 

But,  leaving  this  general  statement,  I  conceive  that 
we  are  by  no  means  justified,  in  point  of  fact,  in  under- 
standing the  historian's  statements  as  having  been  in- 
tended to  be  of  that  comprehensive  character,  in  which 
they  have  been  commonly  received.  Assuredly,  if  we 
undertake  to  discredit  his  narrative  by  a  process  of 
reasoning,  sound  or  otherwise,  founded  on  the  supposed 
fact  that  he  has  represented  the  supernatural  operations 
to  have  been  carried  on  over  an  incredibly  wide  extent, 
the  burden  of  proof  lies  on  us  to  show,  that  he  has 
actually  described  them  as  spread  over  the  extent 
supposed.  I  proceed  to  some  considerations,  tending 
to  make  it  appear,  that  this  cannot  be  affirmed  with  the 
confidence  which  has  been  common. 

In  the  first  place,  in  our  very  partial  acquaintance 
with  ancient  geography,  who  would  undertake  to  say, 
that  the  name  "Egypt,"  which,  in  one  acceptation, 
stood,  no  doubt,  for  all  the  realm  of  the  Pharaohs,  did 
not,  in  another,  stand  for  a  portion  of  that  territory, 
perhaps  for  a  small  district  of  it,  possibly  for  the  mere 


1^  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 

precincts  of  the  royal  court?  In  anc^ient  geography, 
two  instances,  of  the  kind  supposed,  are  familiarly 
known.  The  name  "Adria"  is  given,  in  a  narrower 
sense,  to  the  gulf  within  the  capes  of  Italy  and  Greece, 
and,  in  a  wider,  to  that  estuary,  along  with  a  portion 
of  the  Mediterranean,  south  of  those  promontories  * ;  and 
the  name  "  Asia,"  which  denotes  to  us  the  whole  vast 
reach  of  a  continent,  extending  over  a  hundred  and 
sixty  degrees  of  longitude,  in  another  acceptation  meant 
what  we  now  call  "  Asia  Minor,"  and,  in  another  yet,  a 
small  district  in  its  southwest  corner,  immediately  about 
the  city  of  Ephesus. 

Again ;  it  is  said,  that  "  there  was  blood  throughout 
all  the  land  of  Egypt."  f  The  expression  seems  com- 
prehensive ;  and  yet,  that  the  historian  did  not  mean 
to  say  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  kingdom  were  wholly 
deprived  of  access  to  pure  water,  is  manifest  from  his 
own  words  which  follow,  where  he  says,  that  "  all  the 
Egyptians  digged  round  about  the  river  for  water  to 
drink."  t  That  by  the  phrase,  "  the  waters  of  Egypt," 
is  meant  nothing  more  extensive  than  the  "waters  oH 
the  Nile,"  which  irrigated  the  central  portion  of  that 
country,  not  only  seems  highly  probable  in  itself,  but 
I  think  its  probability  is  heightened  by  some  important 

*  See  Ptolemy,  lib.  3,  capp.  4,  16,  ad  init.  Strabo,  lib.  7,  cap.  5,  §  1. 
Compare  Acts  xxvii.  27  ;  xxviii.  1.  For  want  of  attending  to  this  equivo- 
cal meaning  of  the  word,  Le  Clerc  argues,  ('Ars  Critica,  pars  1,  cap.  1, 
§  1,)  that  the  "  Melita"  of  Paul's  shipwreck  could  not  have  been  our  Malta. 

Illustrations  of  this  kind  might  be  collected  in  an  indefinite  number. 
In  our  day,  the  name  "  Britain  "  stands  for  spaces  of  very  different  size,  dis- 
tinguished, it  is  true,  by  the  epithets  "  Great"  and  "Little."  "  America," 
in  its  proper  sense,  means  the  whole  western  continent  In  a  very  common 
use,  it  denotes  the  United  States.  The  French  Canadians  give  the  name 
^  Boston,"  to  the  whole  territory  subject  to  the  Federal  Government,  as  well 
as,  more  specifically,  to  a  single  city.  "Holland"  denotes  the  Kingdom 
of  the  Netherlands,  or  one  of  its  provinces.  "  Austria  "  is  one  kingdom,  or 
the  empire,  consisting  of  several. 

t  vii.  21.  t  vii.  24. 


VI.]  EXODUS   VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  125 

considerations.  Aaron  is  commanded,  "Take  thy  rod 
and  stretch  out  thine  hand  upon  the  waters  of  Egypt, 
upon  their  streams,  [that  is  the  streams  of  the  waters 
of  Egypt, —  the  streams  into  which  the  waters  of  Egypt, 
whatever  they  were,  spread,]  upon  their  rivers,  upon 
their  ponds,  and  upon  all  their  pools  of  water."*  But 
when  we  are  told  of  what  he  actually  did,  in  the  follow- 
ing verse,  the  statement  is  as  follows;  "He  lifted  up  the 
rod,  and  smote  the  waters  that  were  in  the  river,  in  the 
sight  of  Pharaoh,  and  in  the  sight  of  his  servants,  and 
all  the  waters  that  were  in  the  river  were  turned  into 
blood,  and  the  fish  that  was  in  the  river  died,  and  the 
Egyptians  could  not  drink  of  the  river;"  and  thus  it 
was,  because  the  Nile  was  corrupted,  and  not  because 
the  waters  of  every  part  of  the  kingdom  shared  the 
taint,  that  it  is  said  "  There  was  blood  throughout  all 
the  land  of  Egypt."! 

The  injustice  which  we  do  to  the  historian,  if  we 
interpret,  in  an  unlimited  sense,  all  expressions  which 
he  does  not  take  care  expressly  to  limit,  will  be  further 
apparent  if  we  look  a  few  verses  forward.  He  tells 
us,  for  instance,  that  in  consequence  of  the  plague 
of  murrain,  "  all  the  cattle  of  Egypt  died."  X  He  means 
certainly  that  we  should  understand,  that  there  was 
mortaUty  among  all  the  cattle  of  Egypt,  —  that  there 
was  a  prevaiUng  fatal  pestilence  ;  for  when  he  presently 
relates  subsequent  visitations,  he  says,  that  they  re- 
spectively fell  "upon  man  and  upon  beast,  throughout , 
all  the  land  of  Egypt."  § 

*  vii.  19. 

t  This  view  is  strongly  corroborated  by  the  remark,  (verse  24,)  that 
"  all  the  Egyptians  digged  round  about  the  river  for  water  to  drink,"  for 
certainly  not  all  the  Egyptians  lived  on  the  bank  of  the  river  Nile. 
Many  lived  in  the  interior ;  upon  the  Oases,  and  elsewhere ;  and,  if  all 
who  dug  for  water  dug  by  the  bank  of  that  river,  it  seems  to  follow,  that 
no  water  except  that  of  the  river  had  been  rendered  unfit  for  use. 

I  ix.  G.  §  ix.  9,  19.    Compare  also  ix.  25,  with  x.  5. 


126  .EXODUS   VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 

And,  finally,  that  the  expressions  in  question,  com- 
prehensive as  they  are,  were  not  designed  to  be  taken 
without  limitation,  is  very  evident  from  this  considera- 
tion ;  that,  so  taken,  they  would  call  on  us,  in  some 
cases,  to  understand,  that  the  land  of  Goshen  itself,  the 
peculiar  dwelhng-place  of  the  Israelites,  was  not  ex- 
empted from  the  visitation  of  the  pest.  The  land 
of  Egypt,  understood  in  its  widest  sense,  undoubtedly 
comprehended  that  territory.  No  exception  is  made 
©f  that  territory,  in  the  account  of  the  transformation 
of  water  to  blood  ;  "  there  was  blood  throughout  all  the 
land  of  Egypt " ;  and  in  eome  other  instances,  the 
historian  is  not  careful  to  make  the  discrimination.*  No 
one  supposes,  that,  in  those  instances,  the  Israelites 
shared  in  the  general  calamity,  as  the  words,  taken 
without  qualification,  indicate.  Yet  he  who,  in  one 
instance,  holds  that  a  qualification,  not  expressed,  ought 
to  be  adopted,  of  course  allows  that  the  mere  fact  of 
the  absence  of  express  qualification  in  the  language, 
does  not  forbid  it  to  be  made  in  interpretation. 

I  return  to  the  course  of  the  narrative.  The  water 
of  the  river  having  been  turned  into  blood,  so  that 
"  the  Egyptians  digged  round  about  the  river  for  water 
to  drink,"  w^e  are  told  that  the  magicians  of  Egypt 
"did  so  with  their  enchantments." f  The  nature  of  the 
imitation,  which  they  exhibited,  is  sufficiently  apparent 
from  the  circumstances.  The  transformation  of  the 
vast  rolling  mass  of  water  in  a  river  into  another  sub- 
stance, is  evidently  a  result  attainable  only  by  super- 
natural agency.  The  immense  scale  upon  which  the 
work  was  performed,  rendered  it  incapable  of  any 
delusive  imitation,  and  at  the  same  time  precluded  the 
attempt  at  any  such  imitation.  The  mass  of  waters 
in  their  neighbourhood  being  already  changed,  all  that 

*  See  viii.  6 ;  ix.  9.  t  vii.  2-2. 


VI.]  EXODUS  VII.   1.  — XII.  51.  127 

the  wise  men  had  to  practise  their  impostures  upon, 
was  a  limited  quantity  obtained  by  digging  along  the 
river's  bank.  That,  with  the  preparation  which  they 
had  made  in  consequence  of  Moses  and  Aaron's  having 
threatened  the  act  beforehand,*  thfey  should  be  able, 
with  a  small  quantity  of  water,  so  obtained,  and  pro- 
duced in  a  vessel,  to  exhibit,  by  means  of  some  red 
infusion,  a  copy  of  what  had  been  done,  on  the  small 
scale  which  alone  was  possible,  is  a  statement,  which, 
it  would  seem,  ought  to  occasion  us  no  surprise. 

In  respect  to  the  third  miracle  related,  the  same  facts 
are  again  to  be  observed ;  viz.  those  of  opportunity 
for  preparation  on  the  part  of  the  wise  men,  in  conse- 
quence of  its  having  been  previously  threatened,  and 
of  the  small  scale,  (divesting  it  of  its  most  exfraordi- 
nary  character,)  on  which,  from  the  necessity  of  the 
circumstances,  the  imitation  was  to  be  exhibited.  "  Frogs 
came  up"  at  Aaron's  command,  from  the  river,  "and 
covered  the  land  of  Egypt."  "They  shall  come  up," 
Pharaoh  had  been  admonished,  "into  thine  house,  and 
into  thy  bed-chamber,  and  upon  thy  bed,  and  into  the 
house  of  thy  servants,  and  upon  thy  people,  and  into 
thine  ovens,  and  into  thy  kneading-troughs."  f  In  this 
state  of  things,  the  most  that  could  be  done  by  the 
wise  men,  when,  in  the  precincts  of  Pharaoh's  court, 
they  pretended  to  copy  Aaron's  act,  was  to  practise 
their  imitation  on  a  small  space  of  ground,  artificially 
cleared  of  the  presence  of  the  offensive  reptile  for  that 
purpose.  Precisely  what  they  were  undertaking  to 
produce,  was  already  existing  in  noxious  abundance 
all  around  them.  What  they  proposed  to  bring  in  was 
with  difficulty  kept  out ;  and  it  is  ascribing  litde,  under 
these  circumstances,  to  their  knowledge  of  pharmacy,! 

•  vu.  17.  t  viii.  3,  6. 

t  The  Septuagint  (viiL  7)  calls  their  acts  ^•(^cx<«<. 


128  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 

to  suppose  them  able  to  use  some  substance  to  attract 
into  a  vacant  space  some'  specimens  of  an  animal,  whose 
habits  are  so  w6ll  known. 

It  seems,  from  the  next  circumstance  mentioned,  that 
the  wise  men  must  have  disclaimed  the  power  to  re- 
move the  evil,  under  which  Pharaoh  and  his  court  were 
suffering,  pretending  to  nothing  further  than  to  produce 
some  imitation  of  it.  For,  incommoded  by  it  as  he 
was,  the  king  did  not  look  to  them  for  relief,  but  "  called 
for  Moses  and  Aaron,  and  said,  '  Entreat  Jehovah,  that 
he  may  take  away  the  frogs  from  me,  and  from  my 
people,  and  I  will  let  the  people  go,  that  they  may  do 
sacrifice  unto  the  Lord.' "  *  Moses  takes  a  course,  to 
make  the  withdrawal  of  the  plague  as  pubhc  and  con- 
spicuous as  had  been  the  infliction.  " '  Glory  over  me,' " 
he  says ;  that  is,  assume  authority  over  me,  so  far  as  to 
name  a  time  when  this  shall  be  done;  "*when  shall  I 
entreat  for  thee  and  for  thy  servants,  and  for  thy  people, 
to  destroy  the  frogs  from  thee  and  thy  houses,  that  they 
may  remain  in  the  river  only?'  And  he  said,  *  To- 
morrow.' And  he  said,  *Be  it  according  to  thy  word, 
that  thou  mayest  know  that  there  is  none  Uke  unto  the 
Lord  our  God.' "  f  —  From  the  answer  which  the  king 
makes,  "  To-morrow,"  it  might  be  inferred  that  the  evil, 
how  serious  soever,  was  not  so  intolerable  as  is  gen- 
erally thought,  else  there  would  have  been  more  im- 
patience to  escape  it.  But  I  do  not  urge  this  observa- 
tion, on  account  of  the  degree  of  indefiniteness  which 
attaches  to  the  Hebrew  word. 

The  obstinacy  of  Pharaoh  still  continuing,  Aaron  is 
directed  to  stretch  out  his  rod,  and  "smite  the  dust 
of  the  land,"  and  bring  a  plague  of  gnats,  as  the  word 
(signifying,  without  doubt,  some  small  insect)  is  probably 
best  rendered.    "And  all  the  dust  of  the  land  became 

*  viiL  8.  t  viii.  9, 10. 


i 


VI.]  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  129 

gnats  throughout  all  the  land  of  Egypt " ;  ^  th^t  is,  either, 
gnats  were  found  even  in  the  dryest  places,  or,  it 
seemed  (so  numerous  were  they)  as  if  every  particle 
of  dust  had  become  a  gna»t.  > 

On  this  occasion,  for  the  first  time,  we  are  not  told 
of  a  summons  having  been  sent  to  the  wise  men,  or  of 
warning  given  them  of  any  other  kind ;  so  that  now 
they  had  no  longer  the  advantage  qf  preparation  for 
carrying  on  their  fraud.  Further,  the  size  of  the  insect, 
which,  if  they  were  to  proceed  in  an  imitfition  of  Aaron's 
work,  they  were  to  appear  to  produce  in  some  space 
cleared  for  the  purpose,  was  such,  that,  to  discern  it, 
the  eye  of  the  spectator  would  have  to  be  brought 
close  to  the  scene  of  their  operations,  increasing  the 
difficulty  of  deluding  the  sense.  Under  these  circum- 
stances, after  a  pretended  attempt,  designed  to  sustain 
the  appearance  of  a  confidence,  on  their  own  part,  in 
the  arts  they  professed,  the  wise  men  were  fain  to  give 
up  the  contest  (which  they  did  not  afterwards  venture 
to  resume),  and  own  that  there  was  superhuman  power 
at  work.  **  The  magicians  did  so  with  their  enchant- 
ments to  bring  forth  gnats,  but  they  could  not ;  so  there 
were  gnats  upon  man  and  upon  beast.  Then  the  ma- 
gicians said  unto  Pharaoh,  *  This  is  the  finger  of  God,* " 
or  of  the  gods.f 

In  the  account  of  the  next  infliction,  that  of  some 
venomous  fly,t  the  most  remarkable  particular  is  that 
given  in  the  following  words ;  "  I  will  separate,  in  that 
day,  the  land  of  Goshen,  in  which  my  people  dwell, 
that  no  flies  shall  be  there,  to  the  end  that  thou  mayest 
know,  that  I  am  Jehovah  in  the  midst  of  the  land " ;  § 
that  is,  that  thou  mayest  know,  that  this  is  a  work  of 
the  Hebrew  Deity,  since  the  Hebrew  territory  is  spared. 

*  viiL  16, 17.  t  viiL  18, 19. 

X  The  Septuagint  renders  it  xmifiuM,  dog-Jly.  §  viii.  22. 

VOL.    I.  17 


130  EXODUS  vn.  1.  — XII.  51.  [lect. 

This  is  the  first  instance,  in  ^v»hich,  from  the  mention 
of  the  exemption  of  a  district  distant  from  the  capital, 
it  is  made  to  appear  that  the  sphere  of  miraculous 
operation  was  extensive.  And  in  this  connexion  I 
would  repeat,  that,  for  any  thing  that  can  be  shown  to 
the  contrary,  it  is  likely  that  the  inflictions,  recorded 
previous  to  this,  were  of  limited  extent.  It  is  reasona- 
ble to  imagine,  that  the  means  first  resorted  to  would 
be  addressed  to  the  -monarch  and  those  immediately 
about  his  person,  and  would  accordingly  be  of  a  local 
character.'  When  he  resisted  the  influence  of  these, 
others  were  employed,  suited  -  to  exert  an  influence  on 
his  mind  through  the  minds  of  his  people  at  large,  as 
in  the  sequel  they  actually  did*  And  accordingly  we 
find  the  later  plagues  to  be  of  a  description  less 
limited  to  place  than  the  earlier.  The  frog  and  the 
gnat  are  not  migratory  animals.  The  fly  and  the  locust, 
on  the  contrary,  multiplied  by  whatever  means  in  one 
spot,  would  naturally  diffuse  themselves  throughout  a 
region.  The  meteoric  phenomena,  described  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  ninth  chapter,  are  also  of  a  nature  to 
take  a  wide  range ;  and  epidemic  diseases,  whether 
of  man  or  beast,  tend  to  diffusion,  as  their  hame  im- 
ports. 

Pharaoh  is  described  as  now  relenting  so  far,  as  to 
consent  that  the  Israelites  may  absent  themselves  to 
hold  a  solemn  sacrifice,  but  it  must  be  "within  the 
land."  To  which  Moses  replying  that  this  will  not 
be  safe,  as  they  will  have  to  sacrifice  "  the  abomination 
of  the  Egyptians,"  (rather,  what  the  Egyptians  ven- 
erate,t  viz.  oxen,  goats,  and  sheep,)  the  king  reluc- 
tantly goes  one  step  further,  and  agrees  that  they  may 

*  See  X.  7.  t  nagjin. 


VI.]  EXODi;S  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  131 

retire  into  the  wilderness;  "only,"  says  he,  "ye  shall 
not  go  very  far  away."  * 

The  infliction  withdrawn,  he  fails  to  keep  his  word; 
and  the  next  visitation  is  that  of  a  mortal  disease, 
spreading  among  the  flocks  and  herds,  but  sparing  those 
of  the  Israelites.  "All  the  cattle  of  Egypt  died;"t 
rather,  there  was  mortality  among  all  the  cattle  of 
Egypt ;  or  every  kind  of  cattle  in  Egypt  died ;  there 
was  no  kind  which  did  not  share  in  the  desolation. 

The  king  continuing  contumacious,  Moses  is  directed 
to  denounce  a  plague  of  ulcerous  eruptions ;  and,  for  a 
token  that  it  is  by  the  power  exerted  through  him  that 
they  are  sent,  to  throw  upwards  some  handfuls  of  ashes 
in  Pharaoh's  sight.  "  It  shaU  become,*"  he  is  toJd,  "  small 
dust  in  all  the  land  of  Egypt";  J  that  is,  the  pestilence 
which  it  was  intended  visibly  to  connect  with  an  agency 
of  Moses,  should  be  as  extensive  as  if  this  sign  were 
exhibited  throughout  the  realm,  instead  of  in  the  royal 
presence  alone.  Here  there  is  no  mention  of  any 
exemption  for  the  Israelites,  though  this  was  doubtless 
intended  to  be  understood. 

The  plagues  of  tempest,  locusts,  and  darkness, 
follow,  from  the  first  of  which,  and  apparently  the  last,§ 
the   Israelites  are  related   to  have  been   miraculously 

*  viii.  25-28.  —  There  is  no  authority  for  supposing,  that  any  disin- 
genuousness  was  intended  to  be  practised,  in  the  form  of  the  request, 
(verse  27,)  "  We  will  go  three  days' journey  into  the  wilderness,  and  sacri- 
fice unto  the  Lord."  Had  that  proposal  been  assented  to  by  Pharaoh, 
it  is  to  be  presumed,  that  Moses  would  have  led  the  people  back  again, 
agreeably  to  the  implied  engagement.  In  their  retiring  together  once 
into  the  wilderness  to  sacrifice,  a  useful  precedent  would  have  been 
established,  and  an  important  first  step  taken  towards  ultimfite  liberation 
and  nationality. 

f  ix.  6 ;  compare  ix.  9,  25.  t  ix.  9. 

§  See  ix.  26  ;  x.  23.  I  say,  in  the  latter  case,  "  apparently,"  because 
it  might  be  argued,  that  the  Israelites,  being  forewarned  of  the  coming 
darkness,  provided  themselves  with  artificial  light 


132  EXODUS  Vtl.  1.  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 

preserved,  -while,  in  relation  to  the  second,  that  fact  is 
not  recorded.  They  are,  fqr  the  most  part,  attended 
with  the  same  circumstances  •  as  those  which  immedi- 
ately preceded  them,  and  I  pass  them  over  with  a  few 
remarks. 

They  are  prefaced  by  the  assurance  that  God  would 
now  proceed  so  to  work,  as  to  satisfy  Pharaoh  that 
there  was  no  God  like  him  in  all  the  land,*  and  that 
he  had  no  ground  to  hope  for  protection  from  his  idol 
deities.  -  "  For  this  cause,"  it  is  said,  "  I  have  raised 
thee  up,"  [rather,  "I  have  preserved!  thee  alive"  in  the 
mid«t  of  all-  these  disasters,]  not  because  I  could  not 
at  once  have  compelled  thy  obedience,  but  "  for  to  show 
in  thee  my  power,  and  that  my  name  may  be  declared 
throughout  all  the  land;"  that,  by  the  repetition  of  my 
works,  my  power  may  be  more  illustriously  exhibited. 

We  read,  that  "  the  flax  and  barley  was  smitten  "  by 
the  hail ;  "  for  the  barley  was  in  the  ear,  and  the  flax 
was  boiled.  But  the  wheat  and  the  rye  were  not 
smitten ;  for  they  were  not  grown  up."  J  This  is  one 
of  those  texts,  which  have  a  bearing  on  the  authenticity 
of  the  composition  in  which  they  appear,  the  more 
satisfactory  on  account  of  their  unobtrusive  character. 
The  fact  here  mentioned  is  not  of  such  importance,  that 
tradition  would  be  in  the  least  likely  to  preserve  it,  or 
a  historian  of  a  subsequent  age  to  introduce  it.-  In  an 
eyewitness  of  the  scene,  excited  as  his  mind  was  by 
its  whole  aspect,  it  was  natural  to  record  such  particu- 
lars. It  would  have  been  unaccountable  in  a  writer 
otherwise  circumstanced. 

After  the  invasion  of  the  locusts,  Pharaoh  consent- 
ed  to  allow  the  adults  of  Israel  to  go  and  sacrifice, 

*  ix.  14. 

t  ix.  16.    The  Septuagint  reads,  3«T»ig«V»){,  thou  hast  been  preserved. 
X  ix.  31,  32. 


VI.]  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  133 

provided  they  would  leave  the  children  of  the  nation 
behind ;  intending,  as  it  would  seem,  to  keep  them  as 
hostages  for  their  parents.*  After  the  miraculous  dark- 
ness, he  went  so  far  as  to  propose  that  the  flocks  and 
herds  only  of  the  nation  should  he  left,  to  afford  him 
the  same  security.f  This  proposal  being  rejected  by 
Moses,  he  is  ordered  to  prepare  for  the  final  and  deci- 
sive manifestation  of  Jehovah's  power.  "  All  the  first- 
born in  the  land  of  Egypt,"  it  is  declared^  in  the  words 
of  our  version,  "  shall  die."  J 

The  great  question  upon  the  following  passage,  relates 
to  the  extent  of  the  mortahty  inflicted.  Whai  I  have 
already  said,  perhaps,  leaves  nothing  to  be  added,  with  a 
view  to  show,  that  the  writer,  while  he  uses  language 
of  an  unqualified  character,  indubitably  meant  it  to  be 
taken  with  Umitations  of  sense.  It  is  impossible  to 
deny  this  principle,  in  relation  to  some  statements  which 
have  come  under  our  notice ;  and,  this  being  so,  it  is 
of  course  impossible  to  argue,  that,  in  the  case  before 
us,  language  not  expressly  hmited  in  its  terms  demands 
to  be  expounded  in  its  widest  possible  extent  of  sig- 
nification. 

Interpreting,  then,  the  words  of  the  present  narrative 
in  the  same  manner  as  it  is  unavoidable,  from  the  con- 
text, to  mterpret  similar  expressions  in  others  which 
have  preceded,  we  shall  understand  the  declaration, 
"All  the  first-bom  in  the  land  of  Egypt  shall  die, 
from  the  first-born  of  Pharaoh  that  sitteth  on  his  throne, 
even  unto  the  first-born  of  the  maid-servant  that  is 
behind  the  mill,  and  all  the  first-born  of  beasts,"  to  be 

•  X.  8-10.  f  X.  24. 

I  xi.  5.  It  is  added,  (verse  7,)  "  But  against  any  of  the  children  of 
Israel  shall  not  a  dog  move  his  tongue,  against  man  or  heast."  It  would 
be  better  rendered ;  "  Among  all  the  children  of  Israel,  not  so  much  as  a 
dog,"  not  even  the  most  worthless  animal,  "shall  protrude  his  tongue," 
that  is,  in  dying.    The  destroyer  shall  touch  neither  them  nor  theirs. 


134  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII., 51.  [LECT. 

equivalent  to  this  ;  "  There  shall  be  a  remarkable 
mortality  among  the  first-born  of  men  and  beasts." 

But  "there' was  not  a  house,"  we  are  told,  "where 
there  was  not  one  dead."  *  If  we  take  the  expression 
in  its  utmost  amplitude,  which,  however,  for  the  causes 
above  enlarged  on,  would  be  quite  unreasonable,  it 
remains  to  be  asked,;  "one"  what  was  dead  in  every 
house  ?  Not  certainly,  one  first-born  man,  was  dead 
in  every  house ;  Tor  each'  house  or  family,  whichever 
word  we ,  prefer  for  the  translation,  contained  but  one 
firstrborn  man,  and  if  it  was  intended  to  say  that  every 
family  lost  its  oldest  son,  the  language  would  unques- 
tionably be,  "  There  was  not  a  house  where  the  first-born 
was  not  d^ad."  Upon  this  interpretation,  which  it 
appears  to  me  is  not  to  be  gainsaid,  there  is  nothing  to 
forbid  our  understanding,  what  antecedently  is  altogether 
probable,  that  the  mortality,  (even  if  it  should  be  sup- 
posed to  have  reached  every  family^  and  taken  away 
from  each  some  one  spoil,  either  of  human  or  of  animal 
life,)  swept  away  a  much  larger  proportion  of  victims 
of  the  latter  class  than  of  the  former;  and  then  any 
appearance  of  cruelty  in  the  visitation  is  abated  to  a 
most  material  extent.f 

But,  to  do  it  away  altogether,  I  suggest,  that  we  are 
by  no  means  informed  that  the  mortality,  on  the  night 
in  question,  was  any  greater,  as  to  numbers,  than  in  any 
other  night  in  the  history  of  the  realm  of  Egypt.  It 
may  have  been  so,  or  not ;    this  is  a  point,  which  the 

«  xii.  30. 

f  Further;  the  word  translated  "dead,"  is  nn,  the  participle  (present) 
of  the  verb  nin,  to  die.  Of  course  it  means,  most  literally,  "  dying,"  or 
in  a  dying  state,  a  word  applied,  naturally  and  usually,  to  cases  of  ap- 
parently extreme  sickness,  though  death  does  not  actually  ensue.  It  is 
the  same  word,  which  the  Egyptians  actually  use  of  themselves  (verse 
33).  It  is  urging  it,  then,  altogether  too  far,  to  insist  on  it  as  declaring, 
that  in  every  house  some  death,  even  of  an  animal,  actually  took  place. 


VI.  1  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.       ,  135 

narrative  does  not  determine.  Independently  of  any 
extent  of  the  desolation,  (greater  than  usual,  or  less,) 
the  intervention  of  a  divinity  was  manifest  in  the  extra- 
ordinary selection  of  the  victims.  There  could  be  no' 
night,  when  many  thousands  of  men  and  anitnals  would 
not  die  in  the  populous  Egyptian  territory.  For  aiight 
that  appears  to  the  contrary  in  what  we  are  told,  the 
gates  of  death  were  no  more  crowded  in  that  night 
than  in  any  other.  But  at  other  times,  the  proportion 
of  first-born  of  men  and  cattle  who  perished,  was  no 
greater  than  that  of  the  same  number  of  later-born. 
Now,  the  mortal  shaft  was  aimed  marvellously  at  the 
former,  while  the  latter,  seem  to  have  been  passed  by. 
And  here  was  the  evidence  of  the  intervention  of  a 
God,  and  the  cause  of  the  people's  consternation. 
Disease,  drawing  in  slow  or  rapid  stages  towards  its 
fatal  close,  was  at  all  times,  everywhere,  in  Egypt. 
On  that  night,  the  destroyer  quickened  his  steps  for 
the  first-born,  who  had  been  marked  for  his  prey ;  while, 
over  others,  the  hand,  that  had  seemed  uplifted  to  strike, 
was  suspended  till  that  day  had  passed. 

I  may  add,  that,  in  the  common  order  of  providence, 
it  is  the  nature  and  course  of  national  sins  to  draw 
down  national  judgments.  The  sin  of  holding  in 
slavery  the  Israelites,  who  had  trusted  themselves  to 
their  hospitality,  was  chargeable  upon  the  Egyptian 
nation  as  well  as  upon  its  monarch.  He  was  no  doubt 
countenanced  and  encouraged  in  it  by  their  concur- 
rence. It  was  a  national  sin,  which,  as  far  as  justice 
is  concerned,  it  was  as  fit  that  the  Judge  of  all  the 
earth  should  punish  by  some  miraculous  work,  as  by 
some  merely  providential  infliction ;  and  when  the  judg- 
ment was  extensively  inflicted,  and  one  family  was 
feeling  it  in  its  property,  in  the  loss  of  some  animal, 
and  another  in  some  nearer  bereavement,  it  is  natural 


136  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 

to  presume,  that  it  was  made  to  fall  heaviest  upon  those, 
who  had  most  provoked  it  by  soliciting  the  monarch 
to  persevere  in  his  tyranny,  or  by  cruelties  of  their  own 
to  those  whom  they  held  in  unjust  bondage. 

Preparatory  to  the  final  departure  from  the  Egyptian 
territory,  which  was  now  about  to  take  place,  the  Israel- 
ites receive  a  direction  from  Moses,  which  has  been 
made  the  subject  of  much  misconception,  and  causeless 
complaint.  Moses  is  made,  by  Qur  translators,  to  say  to 
the  people,  under  the  divine  direction,  "  Let  every  man 
borrow  of  his  neighbour,  and  every  woman  of  her 
neighbour,  jewels  of  silver  and  jewels  of  gold."  Here, 
in  the  word  "boi;row,"  meanipg  to  ask  and  receive 
under  a  pledge  of  repayment,  is  conveyed  an  implica- 
tion of  the  Hebrews'  being  directed  to  act  dishonestly. 
But  this  idea  is  altogether  without  support,  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  original  narrative,  as  every  one  who  reads 
Hebrew  knows.  The  word  is  an  extremely  common 
one,  and  means  simply  "to  ask."  A  natural  and  un- 
objectionable interpretation  of  the  text  would  be,  that 
the  Israelites  were  directed  to  ask  and  reclaim,  before 
their  emigration,  such  portion  of  their  own  property  as 
they  might  have  lent  to  their  neighbours  ;  or  to  ask,  that 
the  payment  of  what  might  be  due  to  them  might  be 
made  in  light  and  valuable  articles,  suitable  for  con- 
venient transportation  in  their  approaching  journey. 
Or  even,  if  they  were  directed  to  ask  gifts  of  such  as 
from  motives  of  private  friendship  might  be  disposed 
to  bestow  some  token  of  good-will  at  parting,  still  there 
is  no  recommendation  of  discreditable  conduct.  At  all 
events,  no  such  idea  as  that  of  borrowing,  out  of  which 
the  whole  question  grows,  is  involved  in  the  original 
word.* 

*  The  word  is  h^vf  (xi.  2.)    The  remark  applies  equally  to  xii.  36.    It 
is  there  added  by  our  translators,  that  the  Egyptians  "lent  unto  them 


VI.]  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  137 

In  the  first  twenty  verses  of  the  twelfth  chapter,  we 
read  of  the  original  institution  of  the  feast  called  in  our 
version,  "  the  Passover."  *  Like  the  Christian  rite  of  the 
Last  Supper,  it  was  ordained  previously  to  the  actual 
occurrence  of  the  momentous  event,  whose  memory 
it  was  to  keep  alive,  through  coming  ages.  Designed 
to  be  the  great  national  festival  of  the  Israelites,  to 
commemorate  the  deliverance  now  wrought  for  them 
by  their  Almighty  Protector,  and  their  introduction  to 
an  independent  national  existence,  the  solemnities,  with 
which  it  was  to  be  observed,  were  directed  to  be  such 
as  to  call  up  vividly,  in  the  mind,  the  remembrance  of 
that  event.  As  each  house  had  had  its  own  special 
deUverance,  so  in  each  there  was  to  be  a  domestic 
celebration.  As  on  the  night  of  the  emancipation,  no 
Israelitish  house,  which,  agreeably  to  the  divine  com- 
mand, had  been  marked  with  the  blood  of  the  slain 
lamb,  had  been  invaded  by  death,  so  the  sprinkling  of 
a  lamb's  blood  on  the  door-posts  of  every  Jewish  dwel- 
ling was  to  make,  through  all  time,  a  part  of  the  com- 
memoration. As  the  people  had  hurried  forth  from  the 
land  of  their  bondage,  so  they  were  to  meet  around 

such  things  as  they  required ;  and  they  spoiled  the  Egyptians."  The 
word  here  rendered  lent,  is  merely  the  Hiphil  form  of  the  same  word, 
and,  literally  translated,  would  be,  made  them  ask ;  hence,  they  allowed 
tkem  to  ask,  that  is,  listened  to  them  favorably,  when  they  asked,  which 
I  take  to  be  the  true  meaning.  iSvJ!,  translated  they  spoiled,  is,  as 
pointed  by  the  Masorites,  the  Piel  form  of  the  verb,  and  thus  would 
be  properly  rendered,  they  freed  Egypt,  that  is,  of  their  presence.  But 
I  would  rather  point  it  as  Niphal,  or  Pual,  ^Syr,  or  lSy.J%  and  render 
it ;  "  they  were  freed  as  to  Egypt,"  that  is,  emancipated  from  Egypt  ^- 
For  this  use  of  nx,  see  1  Kings  xv.  23 ;  2  Kings  xiii.  14. 

*  nD3,  from  nD3,  "he  passed  over";  or,  "he  rescued,"  exempted, 
delivered.  Perhaps,  as  Michaelis  proposes,  we  should  rather  adopt  the 
last-named  meaning  of  the  word,  and  render  nD9  (instead  of  "passover,") 
"  deliverance,"  or  "  deliverance  day,"  as  we  call  our  national  anniversary 
festival  "  Independence  day."  See  Isaiah  xxxi.  5.  —  For  language  similar 
to  that  in  Ex.  xii.  12,  see  1  Chron.  xxi.  12.  " 

VOL.  I.  18 


138  EXODUS  VII.   li  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 

the  table  of  this  festival  in  the  attitude  of  haste,  their 
sandals  bound  upon  their  feet,  their  girdles  round  their 
waists,  and  their  staves  in  their  hands,  as  if  ready  for 
the  toils  of  travel.  They  were,  for  the  same  reason,  to 
throw  away  the  bones  of  the  lamb,  without  breaking 
them,  as  usual,  to  taste  the  marrow ;  and  they  were  to 
eat  unleavened  cakes,  in  remembrance  of  the  urgent 
circumstances  whichj  on  that  memorable  night,  had  not 
permitted  their  father3  to  use  bread  prepared  in  the 
usual  manner.  Different  regulations  appear  to  have 
been  intended  to  guard  against  the  danger,  that  idola- 
trous practices  might  creep  in  among  the  ceremonies  of 
such  an  exciting  time.*  And  to  make  the  season  in  all 
respects  august,  it  was  ordained,  that  henceforward  the 
month  in  which  it  occurred  should  be  reckoned  the 
first  of  the  national  religious  year.f  From  this  time, 
accordingly,  in  ecclesiastical  computation,  the  year  began 
in  the  month  Abib,  or  Nisan,  (March  —  April,)  while 
the  civil  year  continued  to  be  reckoned,  as  it  had  been, 
from  Tisri  (September  —  October). 

Such  were  the  directions  prospectively  given  to 
Moses  and  Aaron  respecUng  the  commemoration  of  an 
event  which  had  not  yet  befallen.  Of  course,  they 
were  not  at  present  to  be  given  to  the  people,  who 
could  not  as  yet  understand  them,  and,  at  all  events, 
were  ifi  a  condition  to  do,  at  present,  a  part  only  of 
what  was  ultimately  required.!  Meantime,  the  arrange- 
ments for  the  memorable  night  proceed.  The  Israelites 
are  directed  to  remain  from  evening  to  morning  within 
their  own  doors,  both  to  insure  that  families  should  be 
collected  when  the  hour  for  departure  should  arrive, 
and  perhaps  also  to  prevent  the  Egyptians  from  attach- 
ing to  the  people  any  suspicion  of  personal  agency  in 
the  desolation  which  was  hnpending.    To  impress  upon 

•  xii.  9,  10.'  \  "   ^  :'.'  }  xii.  2.  J  xii.  15. 


VI.]  EXODUS  VII.  1.  — XII.  51.  139 

their  minds,  with  the  utmost  distinctness,  the  truth,  that 
Jehovah  could  and  would  protect  his  obedient  people, 
and  to  give  to  the  ceremonies  of  the  commemorative 
rite,  which  had  been  devised",  the  Uveliest  power  over 
the  imaginations  of  the  coming  generations  which  were 
to  observe  it,  the  people  were  directed  to  put  a  mark 
upon  their  dwellings,  and  assured  that  all  of  them,  who 
should  do  that  first  act  of  allegiance,  God  would  recog- 
nise for  his  own,  and  so  that,  while  ruin  was  raging  all 
around  them,  it  should  pass  no  portal  distinguished  by 
that  sign.*  The  night  came,  and  the  consummating 
wonder  was  done.  The  cupidity  of  the  Egyptian  mon- 
arch and  his  people  could  hold  out  no  longer  against 
the  experience  and  the  terror  of  such  judgments ;  the 
arm  of  the  oppressor  was  broken,  and  the  oppressed 
went  out  free.f 

"Six  hundred  thousand  on  foot,  that  were  men,"  J  con- 
stituted, at  this  time,  the  effective  force  of  the  nation. 
The  men  of  full  age  are  commonly  computed  to  com- 
pose one  fourth,  or  one  fifth,  part  of  a  population.  If 
we  assume  the  latter  proportion  to  be  correct,  the 
population  of  Israel,  at  this  period,  amounted  to  three 
millions  of  souls.  This  increase  from  seventy  persons, 
who  composed  the  family  of  Jacob,  at  the  time  of  his 
migration,  has  sometimes  been  represented  as  incredi- 
bly great.  An  easy  computation,  however,  will  show, 
that,  supposing  the  population  to  have  doubled  once  in  ^ 
twenty-five  years,  (which  is  not  so  rapid  an  increase  ' 
as  has  been  witnessed,  independently  of  emigration,  in 
the  United  States,)  four  hundred  and  thirty  years,  the 

*  xii.  26,  27. 

f  "  Bless  me  also,"  says  Pharaoh,  (verse  32,)  in  our  translation,  when 
he  bids  them  depart ;  'rix  Dri3^3  ;  that  is,  "  Give  me  a  parting  blessing"; 
«  Take  your  leave  of  me,"  **  Begone."  —  DniNB'P,  (verse  34,)  their  platters, 
rather  than  "  kneading-trouglis." 

t  xu.  37. 


140  EXODUS  VII.   1.  — XII.  51.  [LECT. 

r 

time  declared*  to  have  intervened  between  Jacob's 
emigration  and  the  Exodus,  would  have  raised  it  from 
seventy  persons,  not  to  three  millions  only,  but  to  more 

^  than  ten.  There  is  no  sufficient  ground  for  questioning 
the  correctness  of  the  chronology,  as  thus  represented ; 
though  the  reading  of  the  corresponding  text  in  some 
copies  of  the  Septuagint  version,  and  the  interpretation 
put  on  a  passage  in  the  New  Testament,  have  cre- 
ated an  impression  that  the  period  of  the  Israelitish 
sojourn  in  Egypt  was  actually  no  more  than  two  hun- 
dred and  fifteen  years. 

k  *  xii.  41.    The  statement  is  confirmed  by  Acts  vii.  6,  and  by  Gen.  xv. 

•  13,  with  only  the  difference  that  it  is  made  in  these  last  passages  in  round 

numbers.  The  question  of  reconciling  the  passage  in  Galatians  (iii.  17), 
with  these,  belongs  to  the  interpretation  of  the  New  Testament  rather  than 
of  the  Old.  It  may  be  proper,  however,  to  remark,  that  Paul's  argument,  in 
his  Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  did  not  at  all  require  exactness  in  a  computa- 
tion of  time.  He  was  only  concerned  to  show,  that,  as  Moses  was  after 
Abraham,  the  law  given  by  the  ministry  of  the  former,  could  not  invali- 
date the  promise  made  to  the  latter.  This  was  equally  true  whether 
there  was  an  interval  of  four  hundred  and  thirty  years  between  Abraham 
and  Moses,  or  between  Jacob  and  Moses ;  and  if  the  copies  of  the  Septua- 
gint, which  were  in  the  hands  of  those  to  whom  he  was  writing,  presented 
the  former  view,  there  was  no  reason  why  he  should  not  refer  to  it  as  it 
stood,  instead  of  interrupting  his  discourse  to  enter  into  a  chronological 
argument.  —  Further,  I  would  ask,  whether  we  should  not  do  well  to 
render  Paul's  words,  (though  without  the  definite  article  in  Greek,)  "  after 
the  four  hundred  and  thirty  years  " ;  that  is,  the  famous  four  hundred  and 
thirty  years ;  —  the  well-known  four  centuries  of  primeval  servitude  ? 
This  would  relieve  his  statement  of  all  apparent  inconsistency  with  the 
representation  in  Ebcodus.  —  If  it  be  said,  that  Moses  (Ex.  vi.  16-20) 
was  only  the  fourth  in  descent  from  Levi,  a  fact  hardly  consistent  with  the 
supposition  that  they  lived  four  hundred  and  thirty  years  apart,  the  obvious 
reply  is,  that  nothing  is  more  common,  in  Scripture  genealogies,  than  the 
omission  of  steps  in  the  series ;  and  that,  in  the  present  instance,  Joshua, 
the  contemporary  of  Moses,  is  actually  related  (1  Chron.  vii.  23-27)  to 
have  been  the  tenth  in  descent  from  Joseph,  brother  of  Levi. 


yl-  h 


:i  ^  / 


/T:  //    / 


VII.]  EXODUS  Xm.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  141 


LECTURE   VII. 

EXODUS  xm.  1.  — XVIII.  27. 

The  Jewish  Constitdtion  called  a  Theocract.  —  Meaning  and 
Object  of  the  Mosaic  Representation  of  God,  as  King  of 
THE  Jews-. —  PREPARATiojf  for  a  National  Worship.  —  Incom- 
plete and  Progressive  Character  of  some  Provisions  of 
the  Law.  —  Agency  of  Moses  in  their  Arrangement.  —  Post- 

PONEBIENT      OF     THE     INVASION     OF     CaNAAN.   —  NaTCRE     OF     THE 

Pillar  of  Cloud  and  Flame.  —  Passage  of  the  Red  Sea. — 
Statute  given  at  Marah.  —  Miraculous  Supplies  of  Quails, 
of  Manna,  and  op  Water.  —  Battle  with  the  Amalekites. 
—  The  Law  given  on  Sinai  a  Code  of  Statute  Law. 

At  the  period  at  which  we  have  now  arrived,  the 
Jews,  rescued  from  the  servitude  of  Egypt,  begin  to 
constitute  a  distinct  nation,  regulated  by  a  government 
of  their  own.  To  this  government,  the  name  Theocra- 
cy has  been  applied.  The  prevailing  idea  founded  upon 
that  name,  has  been,  that,  in  a  manner  corresponding 
to  that  by  which  human  monarchs  superintend  the  con- 
cerns of  their  respective  jurisdictions,  the  Supreme 
Bemg  administered  the  affairs  of  the  Jewish  people ; 
and  it  has  even  been  commonly  understood,  that  this 
immediate  superintendence  was  continued  to  a  late 
period  of  the  Jewish  history. 

It  will,  however,  I  think,  appear,  on  a  more  careful 
examination,  that  there  was  nothing  in  the  relation 
which  God  sustamed  towards  this  people,  to  aflfect 
permanently  then*  condition  in  respect  to  being  gov- 
erned, like  other  nations,  by  a  political  organization. 
The  word  Theocracy  is  of  no  older  origin  than  the 
writings  of  Josephus,*  and  is   not  to  be  suflfered  to 

*  Contra  Apioaem.  Lib.  2,  §  16. 


142  EXODUS  XIII.   1— XVIII.  27.  [  LECT. 

confuse  our  speculations  upon  the  subject  to  which  it 
relates. 

The  simple  account  of  that  subject  I  take  to  be  as 
follows.  In  the  time  of  Moses,  GJod  called  himself  the 
King  of  the  nation,  chiefly  because  he  was  its  lawgiver. 
It  had  thrown  off  its  allegiance  to  Pharaoh,  and  for  the 
present  had  no  earthly  monarch.  Moses  was  its  guide 
and  legislator,  but  he  was  only  such  under  the  divine 
miraculous  direction.  As  other  nations  took  their  law 
from  their  respective  governors,  the  Jews  took  theirs 
froili  the  Divine  Being,  by  the  ministry  of  Moses. 
Other  offices,  for  which  communities  commonly  look  to 
their  head,  were  performed  for  this  nation  by  God,  by 
constant  supermtendence,  and  frequent  supernatural 
interposition.  Kings  are  the  leaders  of  their  people 
in  migrations  and  in  war  ;  God,  by  the  ministry  of 
Moses,  guided  the  marches  of  the  Israelites,  and  gave 
them  victory.  It  belongs  to  kings  to  inflict  punish- 
ment on  offenders  ;  God  inflicted  it  by  miraculous 
agency  in  such  cases  as  those  of  Mu-iam,  Nadab  and 
Abihu,  and  Korah,  Dathan,  and  Abu*am.  The  founder 
of  a  state  is  by  virtue  of  that  service  its  monarch  ;  God 
in  an  obvious  and  peculiar  sense  was  the  founder  of  the 
•^  ''  Jewish  state,  and,  in  that  character,  he  expressly  and 
repeatedly  claims  the  obedience  of  the  people.*  The 
owner  of  a  territory,  who  gives  to  others  permission  to 
settle  on  it,  is  its  lord ;  and  this  view  is  urged  in  re- 
spect to  the  Jewish  occupation  of  Palestine.!  The 
appointment  of  inferior  magistrates  belongs  to  royalty ; 
and  this  prerogative  God  had  exercised  in  various  par- 
ticulars. Finally,  the  people,  renouncing  all  other  alle- 
giance, had  expressly  professed  to  take  Jehovah  for 
their  sovereign   and  lawgiver.!     The  reason  of  then* 

•  E.  g.  Deut  vilO,  2a  f  E.  g.  Lev.  xxv.  2a 

J  Ex.  xix.  4—8. 


>. 


VII.]  EXODUS    XIII.   1— XVIII.  27.  143 

profession  being  taken  in  this  form,  and  the  chief  reason 
why  God  is  repeatedly  represented  to  them  in  the 
character  of  their  monarch,  I  conceive  to  be  no  other 
than  this ;  that,  when,  by  their  own  solemn  act,  they  had 
acknowledged  themselves-  his  subjects,  it  would  be 
obvious  to  them,  that  disobedience  to  his  law  would 
become  opposition  to  the  government  of  the  state,  and 
be  liable,  as  such,  not  merely  to  visitations  of  God's 
displeasure,  considered  as  the  governor  of  the  universe, 
but  to  civil  penalties ;  and  further,  that  worship  of  any 
other  deity  would  then  become  the  highest  political 
offence,  and  be  punishable  in  its  character  of  high 
treason.  Every  one  knows,  that  it  was  a  leading  part 
of  the  Jewish  system  to  train  the  people  to  a  religious 
obedience  by  the  threat  of  civil  penalties.  A  man  was 
bound  to  render  a  prescribed  devotional  service,  under 
pain  of  being  dealt  with  as  an  offender  against  the 
commonwealth.  But  to  furnish  a  basis  for  such  pro- 
cedure, it  was  plainly  fit,  that  he,  for  whom  the  religious 
homage  was  demanded,  should  at  the  same  time  be 
presented  as  the  head  of  the  commonwealth. 

When  I  add,  that  the  divine  acknowledgment  of  this 
relation  was  also  an  honor  to  the  people,  which  would 
naturally  be  accompanied  with  a  sense  of  responsibility' 
on  their  part,  I  think  we  have  a  complete  account  of  the 
reason  why  Jehovah  is  exhibited  to  the  Jews,  not  only 
in  the  character  of  their  divine  disposer,  as  he  is  of  all 
men,  but  in  the  peculiar  character  of  their  national 
ruler.  I  have  admitted,  that  in  Moses'  time,  while  the 
nation  was  establisliing,  other  prerogatives  of  royalty 
are,  with  much  propriety  of  language,  ascribed  to  God. 
But,  after  that  time,  there  was,  in  one  form  or  another, 
a  complete  organized  government,  not  differing  from 
the  governments  of  other  nations  in  any  such  way,  as 
to  justify  its  being  called   by  the  name  theocracy^  or 


,*-7_ 


144  EXODUS  XIII.  1.  — XVIII.  ^.  [LECT. 

any  like  it ;  and,  whatever  opinion  may  be  entertained 
concerning  the  time  when  miraculous  interposition  in 
the  affairs  of  the  nation  ceased,  there  seems  no  good 
reason  for  doubting,  that,  after  the  government  was  once 
arranged,  it  was  mainly  trusted,  as  are  other  govern- 
ments, to  the  management  of  human  agents. 

The  first  step  taken  in  the  new  organization  of  the 
people  is,  an  arrangement  for  the  support  of  the  wor- 
ship of  Jehovah ;  and  this  is  so  made,  as  to  be  a  me- 
mento to  them  of  the  circumstances  of  their  emancipa- 
tion from  Egypt.  As,  when  a  divine  judgment  had 
been  executed  upon  the  Egyptians,  the  first-born  of 
man  and  beast  were  the  victims,  while  the  ravage  was 
not  permitted  to  extend  to  the  Israelites,  the  nation,  in 
token  of  their  gratitude,  were  now  to  sequester  their 
first-born  to  God's  service ;  yet  not  so,  that  the  first- 
born of  all  the  families  were  actually  to  be  taken  for 
priests,  and  the  first-born  of  all  animals  to  serve  as 
victims,  but  that,  they  being  held  liable  to  be  so  used, 
the  nation  should  the  more  cheerfully  acquiesce  in  an 
arrangement,  more  convenient  to  itself,  by  which  the 
whole  tribe  of  Levi,  as  was  afterwards  directed,  should 
be  substituted  for  the  sacred  office  in  the  place  of  the 
first-born  of  all  the  tribes,  while  (with  reference  to  a 
distinction  which  we  are  by  and  by  to  consider)  the 
first-born  of  unclean  animals,  being  unfit  for  sacrifice, 
were  to  have  their  places  suppHed  by  victims  of  other 
species.  And  as  this  seems  to  be  in  the  nature  of  an 
incomplete  and  progressive  arrangement,*   it  affords  a 

•  I  have  spoken  of  the  arrangement  in  xiii.  1  - 16,  introductory  to 
that  in  Numbers  i.  47-54,  as  being  in  the  nature  of  a  progressive  ar- 
rangement. But  it  was  so  only  in  a  qualified  sense.  It  is  at  least 
doubtful,  whether  Moses'  original  intention  was  to  form  a  priesthood 
from  the  first-born  of  every  family,  an  intention  afterwards  relinquished 
in  favor  of  the  tribe  of  Levi.  The  language  (verse  2)  is  "  Sanctify  to 
me  all  the  first-born  among  the   children  of  Israel,  both  of  man  and 


VII.]  EXODUS  XIII.  1.— XVIII.  27.  146 

convenient  opportunity  to  make  two  remarks  on  the 
nature  o(  such  arrangements,  which  sometimes  seem 
to  be  viewed  as  being  unsuitable  for  God  to  make, 
inasmuch  as  he  knows  from  the  beginning  all  that  will 
ultimately  be  found  necessary  or  fit. 

It  is  true,  in  the  first  place,  that  "  God  does  not  make 
himself  wiser  by  trying  experiments."  But  it  is  also 
true,  that  his  administration  always  has  regard  to  the 
benefit  and  satisfaction  of  those  w  hom  it  concerns ;  and 
that  (for  a  like  reason  to  that,  for  which  a  more  com- 
plete law  was  given  in  Christianity  than  in  Judaism, 
viz.  because  there  was  a  more  mature  preparation  for 
the  former  than  for  the  latter)  it  was  fit  that  the  same 
generation  should  be  led  on,  by  successive  arrange- 
ments, from  one  step  to  another,  each  preparing  the 
way  for  that  which  was  next  to  follow. 

But,  in  the  second  place,  I  apprehend,  that  when  a 
law  is  announced,  prefaced  by  such  w'ords  as  "  the 
Lord  spake  unto  Moses,"  it  is  by  no  means  necessary 
to  understand  the  arrangement  to  have  been  originated 
(so  to  speak)  in  the  Divine  Mind,  and  then  dictated  to 
the  Jewish  leader,  to  be  by  him  promulgated.  In  my 
view,  the  force  of  the  language  is  equally  well  met,  if 
we  understand,  when  other  considerations  would  incline 
us  so  to  do,  that  the' plan  was  a  plan  of  Moses,  who,  by 

beast"  But  "  sanctify,"  K'^p,  means  simply  to  sequester,  particularly  to 
a  sacred  use.  The  first-born  might  well  be  said  to  be  "sanctified," 
sequestered,  set  apart  to  God,  if,  from  the  first,  the  intention  was  to 
cause  them  to  provide  a  sacred  order  by  a  substitution  of  the  Levitical 
family,  in  their  place.  Ultimately,  the  first-born  of  men,  thus  sequestered, 
were  exchanged,  so  to  speak,  for  the  Levites,  and  the  first-born  of 
unclean  animals  were  exchanged  for  clean  animals,  that  is,  those  which 
were  fit  to  be  used  as  victims,  (xiii.  13;  compare  Numbers  xviii.  15.) 
Unclean  animals  were  certainly  not  intended,  in  the  first  arrangement, 
to  be  "sanctified"  in  the  sense  of  being  used  as  victims.  No  more  can 
it  be  argued,  ex  vi  termini,  that  the  first-born  were  intended  to  be  so 
sanctified,  as  to  be  employed  as  servants  of  the  semctuary. 
VOL.    I.  19 


146  EXODUS  xm.  i.  — xviii.  27.  [LEct. 

being  encouraged  to  act  on  this  kind  of  responsibility, 
would  be  in  all  respects  better  qualified  for  his  office 
as  leader  of  the  people ;  that,  having  been  devised  by 
him,  it  was  submitted  for  the  divine  approval ;  and  that 
(this  approval  obtained)  it  was  announced,  in  such 
words  as  I  have  quoted,  as  resting  ou  the  divine  au- 
thority. 

This  view  of  the  force  of  those  prefatory  words  is 
fully  borne  out  by  a  comparison  of  two  passages  in 
the  Pentateuch.  In  the  book  of  Numbers  we  read, 
without  any  qualification,  "And  the  Lord  spake  unto 
Moses,  saying,  *  Send  thou  men  that  they  may  search 
the  land  of  Canaan.' "  *  Arguing  from  these  words,  as 
is  commonly  done  when  they  occur  in  other  places, 
we  should  understand  the  arrangement  to  have  been 
dictated  in  the  first  instance  by  God  to  Moses.  But, 
where  the  same  incident  is  related  in  Deuteronomy, 
we  find  quite  a  different  aspect  put  upon  it.  There 
we  see  Moses  represented  as  saying  to  the  people ; 
"  Ye  came  near  unto  me  every  one  of  you  and  said, 
*  We  will  send  men  before  us,  and  they  shall  search 
out  the  land ' ;  —  and  the  saying  pleased  me  well,  and 
I  took  twelve  men  of  you,  one  of  a  tribe."  f  There  is 
no  discrepance  between  the  two  statements.  The  peo- 
ple proposed  the  measure  to  Moses.  He  waited  for 
leave  to  execute  it ;  and  when  such  authority  had  been 
given,  then  he  properly  announced  to  the  people,  "  The 
Lord  said  unto  Moses,  send  men  "  &c  If  such,  by  a 
subsequent  explanation,  is  shown  to  have  been  the  case, 
on  an  occasion  where  the  words,  taken  alone,  are 
naturally  supposed  to  indicate  that  the  arrangement 
was  first  communicated  by  God  to  Moses,  there  is  no 
good  reason  to  doubt  that  such  was  the  process  in  other 

•  xiii.  1.  t  i.  22. 


VII.]  EXODUS  XIII.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  147 

instances,  where  no   similar  explanation  has  made  it 
known  to  us. 

An  incident  leading  to  the  same  conclusion  occurs 
in  a  later  part  of  the  passage,  which  is  the  subject  of 
this  lecture.*  An  arrangement,  of  the  most  important 
character,  relating  to  the  people's  social  condition,  is 
declared  to  have  been  made  by  Moses  at  the  original 
suggestion  of  Jethro,  his  father-in-law  ;  an  arrangement 
amounting  to  no  less,  than  tjie  separation  (in  great 
part)  of  the  ofRc6  of  judging  from  that  of  legislation, 
except  in  cases  of  appeals.  Jethro,  finding  Moses  too 
much  burdened  by  the  cares  of  administration,  advises 
him  to  commit  questions  of  minor  concern  to  the  dis- 
cretion of  inferior  magistrates  selected  by  him  for  the 
purpose,  reserving  only  the  more  weighty  matters  for 
his  personal  cognizance.  And  it  is  remarkable  that 
Jethro  adds,  "  If  thou  shalt  do  this  thing,  and  God  com- 
mand thee  sOf  then  thou  shalt  be  able  to  endure."  The 
implication  is,  that,  though  a  suggestion  of  his  own,  it 
might  and  must  become  a  divine  command,  before  it 
could  be  carried  into  execution. 

We  have  here  then  specific  cases,  in  which  measures, 
spoken  of  as  adopted  under  divine  direction,  appear, 
on  further  observation,  to  have  had  their  original  source 
in  human  sagacity.  The  principle  of  interpretation, 
thus  ascertained,  is  of  obvious  importance.  When  we 
read,  "The  Lord  said  unto  Moses,  *  Establish  and  pro- 
mulgate such  or  such  a  law,' "  if  that  law  appears  to 
us  trivial,  or  not  thoroughly  well  devised  to  meet  its 
end,  —  if  we  find  even  that  it  actually  requires  after- 
wards, on  experiment,  to  be  qualified,  or  extended, 
or  repealed,  —  we  are  not  debarred  from  supposing, 
that  it  had  its  origin  in  the  imperfect  wisdom  of  Moses, 
and  that  he  was   but  permitted  to  adopt  it  in   order 

*  xviii.  13-26. 


148  EXODUS  XIII.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  [LECT. 

that  he  might  perceive  its  imperfections,  and  learn  the 
political  wisdom,  which  his  station  demanded,  in  seeing 
what  defects  it  had  failed  to  supply,  and  how  a  better 
measure  w^as  to  be  devised.  It  would  seem,  that,  by 
such  a  course,  he  would  be  subjected  to  precisely  the 
discipline,  which  was  desirable  for  his  own  improve- 
ment, and  the  people's  good.,  To  be  permitted  to  ini- 
tiate measures,  would  exercise  his  sagacity,  and  deepen 
his  sense  of  responsibleness.  It  would  heighten  his 
interest  in  his  work,  and  in  the  people.  It  would  cause 
him  to  be  more  intimately  acquainted  with  the  spirit, 
the  uses,  and  the  bearings  of  the  law  he  was  to  ad- 
minister. And,  in  view  of  these  facts  and  considera- 
tions, I  see  no  reason  whatever  against  supposing  the 
case  actually  to  have  been,  that,  while  the  leading  pur- 
poses and  principles  of  his  law  were  subjects  of  origi- 
nal and  direct  divine  communication,  the  details  were 
in  many  instances  left  to  his  own  judgment,  subject  to 
the  divine  approval ;  an  approval,  which  might,  without 
doubt,  be  fitly  given,  for  the  time,  even  when  it  was 
foreseen  that  an  arrangement  proposed  would  prove 
insufficient  to  its  end. 

The  people  having  been  emancipated  from  Egypt, 
we  might  expect  to  find  them  immediately  conducted 
into  the  promised  land  of  their  permanent  habitation, 
which  they  might  have  reached  in  a  few  days'  march.* 
But  "  God  led  them  not  through  the  way  of  the  land 
of  the  Philistines,  though  that  was  near ;  for  God  said, 
*Lest  perad venture  they  repent,  when  they  see  war,  and 
they  return  to  Egypt.' "  f  It  was,  no  doubt,  within  the 
resources  of  divine  power  to  give  them  at  once  a  su- 
pernatural courage  ;  to  inspire  them  with  a  mature 
national  spirit.  But  it  is  not  thus  that  God  educates 
either  men  or  nations.      The  very  idea  of  education 

•  Deut.  i.  2.  t  Ex.  xiii.  17. 


VII.]  EXODUS   XIII.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  149 

embraces  progressive  voluntary  action  of  the  human 
reason,  and  struggles  of  the  human  will.  The  Israelites 
were  as  yet  only  a  crowd  of  emancipated  slaves,  with- 
out character,  without  national  unity  or  sympathy,  with- 
out mutual  confidence,  without  subordination ;  of  course 
without  power  of  organizing  or  maintaining  a  state, 
except  under  circumstances  of  seclusion  and  security. 
The  first  object  was  to  give  them  a  system  of  govern- 
ment, which  should  be  the  basis  of  a  national  identity, 
and  then  allow  them  undisturbed  ( pportunity  for  con- 
solidating their  institutions,  and  thus  preparing  them- 
selves for  that  energy  of  action,  which  would  be  needed 
when  they  should  come  to  invade  the  territory  they 
claimed,  and  establish  there  an  independent  state.  For 
this  reason  they  were  now  arrested  in  their  progress, 
to  receive  a  law ;  and  events  were  afterwards  so  dis- 
posed, that  they  were  withheld  from  the  prosecution 
of  the  great  contemplated  enterprise  for  forty  years,  till 
the  pusillanimous  generation  of  Egyptian  bond-men  had 
died,  and  a  race  born  in  freedom,  and  imbued  in  some 
measure  with  the  spirit  of  the  institutions  they  were 
to  perpetuate,  had  succeeded  to  their  places.* 

"The  Lord  went  before  thism,"  the  history  pro- 
ceeds, "by  day  in  a  pillar  of  a  cloud,  to  lead  them  in 
the  way ;  and  by  night  in  a  pillar  of  fire,  to  give  them 
light ;  he  took  not  away  the  pillar  of  the  cloud  by  day, 
nor  the  pillar  of  fire  by  night,  from  before  the  people."  t 
The  word  "pillar,"  or  column,  is  the  same  which  is 
used  in  the  book  of  Judges,|  where  certainly  no  super- 
natural object  was  intended.     Nor  can  I  allow  it  to  be 

•  "The  children  of  Israel  went  up  harnessed  (C3'iypn)  out  of  the 
land  of  Egypt " ;  (xiii.  18 ;)  rather,  they  went  up  "  in  bands  of  fifty " ; 
though  Gesenius,  referring  to  an  Arabic  root,  would  have  the  word  mean 
"eager,"  "brave."  —  In  verse  19  is  a  reference  to  the  fact,  recorded 
in  Genesis  1.  24,  25. 

t  xiii  21,  22.  J  ^<^j.!•    Judges  xx.  40 ;  compare  38. 


150  EXODUS  XIII.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  [LECT. 

as  evident  as  has  been  supposed,  that  the  historian  de- 
signed to  represent  the  pillar  of  cloud  and  fire  ■which 
marshalled  the  Israelitish  journeyings,  as  being  of  that 
character.  When  masses  of  men  were  moving  through 
the  vast  plains  of  the  East,  we  know  that  it  was  an- 
ciently the  practice  for  their  movements  to  be  regulated 
by  a  fire  near  the  leader's  person,  whose  flame  would 
be  visible  in  the  night-time,  and  its  wreath  of  smoke 
by  day,  marking  the  spot  where  his  tent  was  pitched 
when  encamped,  and  the  road  which  he  was  taking 
when  on  the  march.*  It  at  least  deserves  careful  con- 
sideration, whether  the  verse  which  I  have  quoted  was 
intended  to  declare  that  the  Lord  went  before  the  peo- 
ple in  a  flame  and  smoke,  in  any  other  sense,  than  that 
he  was  always  in  communication  with  their  leader ;  he 
was  always  present  in  the  smoke  and  flame,  which, 
according  to  convenient  and  prevailing  custom,  were 
the  artificial  signal  of  the  leader's  presence.f  And  this 
view  appears  to  derive  confirmation  from  the  fact  that 
Hobab  was  subsequently  engaged  by  Moses  to  be  his 
guide,  as  one  acquainted  with  the  intricacies  of  the 
wilderness. t  If  ^he  had  already  supernatural  conduct, 
there  seems  no  reason  why  he  should  have  sought  such 
oflSces  from  Hobab. 

Nor  do  I  find  any  thing  in  the  circumstances  of  the 
narrative  which  next  follows,  to  show  that  the  smoke 
and  flame,  which  accompanied  the  marches  of  the  Isra- 

•  "  Perticam,  que  undique  conspici  posset,  supra  pnetorium  statuit,  ex 
quit  sfgnum  eminebat,  pariter  omnibus  conspicuum.  Observabatur  ignis 
nodu,  fumus  tnicrrftu."  Quintus  Curtius  de  Alexandre,  lib.  5,  cap.  2, 
§  7.  See  also,  Vegetius  "  de  Re  Militari,"  lib.  3,  cap.  5;  Frontinus 
"  Strategematicin,"  lib.  2,  cap.  5,  §  16. 

\  «  He  took  not  away,"  says  our  version,  "  the  pillar  "  &c.  But  B^'pn 
means  "he  departed";  "he  abandoned."  Therefore,  rather,  "he  left 
not,"  "  he  did  not  desert,"  the  signal,  or  (as  we  should  say)  the  standard, 
of  Moses. 

X  Numbers  x.  29,  32. 


VII.]  EXODUS  XIII.  1.— XVIII.  27.  151 

elites,  were  ordinarily  of  a  supernatural  character.  The 
passage  of  the  Red  Sea  was  a  miraculous  incident, 
obviously  most  effectually  designed,  and  most  seasona- 
bly applied,  to  satisfy  the  Israelitish  nation  (for  their 
own  use  and  that  of  their  posterity),  that  they  might 
confide  in  the  protection  of  him  who  had  called  them 
to  be  his  servants  ;  and  to  satisfy  the  Egyptian  nation, 
that  it  would  be  at  their  utmost  peril,  if  they  undertook 
again  to  assail  their  now  emancipated  bond-men,  in 
their  undisciplined  and  exposed  state  in  the  wilderness. 
And  part  of  the  miracle  of  that  time  is  related  to  us 
in  two  verses  of  the  fourteenth  chapter.*  When  the 
leader,  as  was  fit,  now  that  a  hostile  force  was  in  close 
pursuit,  took  his  post  of  observation  in  the  rear  of  his 
army,  the  usual  signal  of  his  presence  was  for  the  time 
endued  with  supernatural  properties.  "The  angel  of 
God,"  (that  which  proved  in  this  -instance  to  be  a  mi- 
raculous divine  instrument,)  "removed  and  went  be- 
hind.    And  the  pillar  of  the  cloud was  a 

cloud  and  darkness  to  them,  but  it  gave  light  by  night 
to  these."  On  the  side  turned  towards  the  favored 
people,  it  was  all  guiding  and  cheering  radiance,  while 
it  rolled  over  the  devoted  heads  of  their  enemies  its 
dense  volumes  of  blinding  and  threatening  smoke. 
Such  was  its  peculiar  miraculous  agency  on  the  present 
occasion.  But  this  by  no  means  proves  it  to  have  been, 
at  other  times,  a  supernatural  phenomenon. 

When  Pharaoh  heard  that  the  people  had  turned 
their  left  f  side  to  the  Red  Sea,  and  taken  their  march 
towards  the  south,  his  inference  was  that  they  had  lost 
their  way,  and  that  the  protection  of  then-  divinity,  which 

*  Verses  19,  20. 

f  xiv.  5.  So  Michaelis  and  others,  on  the  authority  of  an  Arabic  root, 
well  render  tlie  word  n^^.  It  was  no  news  to  Pharaoh  that  the  people 
had  "fled." 


Ifi^  EXODUS  Xm.  1.  — XVUL  27.  [LECT. 

had  hitherto  secured  them  against  his  power,  was  with- 
drawn. He  pursued  them  accordingly,  and  encountered 
the  miraculous  discomfiture,  which  was  designed  to 
confirm  the  confidence,  of  the  Israehtes  in  their  de- 
liverer, and  to  discourage  their  oppressor  from  any 
further  attempts.* 

At  Marah,  where,  under  providential,  or  miraculous 
guidance,  Moses  is  enabled  by  the  infusion  of  a  leaf 
or  herb,  to  prepare  the  bitte^  waters  for  the  people's 
use,  we  are  told  that  God  "made  for  them  a  statute 
and  an  ordinance."  f  Agreeably  to  a  well  known  Hebrew 
idiom,  this  might  suitably  be  rendered,  "o  [or  the] 
great  ordinance,"  "the  important  statute."  What  stat- 
ute it  was,  we  are  not  told ;  but  th^  accompanying  cir- 
cumstances of  solemn  injunction  show,  that  it  was 
regarded  as  of  special  consideration,  and  it  has  been 
suggested,,  (with  strong  probabihty  as  I  think,)  to  have 
been  the  sabbatical  institution.     We  shall  presently  find 

»  xiv.  18,  31.  "Dry  land"  n'^3:  (xiv.  22)  is  land  sufficiently  bare  of 
water  to  walk  on.  Compare  Genesis  i.  9.  —  "The  waters  were  a  tcaU 
unto  thera  on  their  right  hand>and  on  their  left";  (ibid.)  that  is,  the 
deeper  waters  on  either  side  were  a  defence  to  their  flanks.  Compare 
1  Samuel  xxv.  16.  It  is  true  that  (xv.  8)  we  find  the  image  presented, 
which  is  commonly  received  from  the  historical  statement  But  this 
latter  text  occurs  in  the  midst  of  an  impassioned  lyric.  —  The  Lord 
{25\  "  took  off  their  chariot  wheeb  " ;  their  chariots  were  shattered  in 
driving  over  the  rocks  in  the  bed  of  the  river,  over  which,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  miraculous  act  which  had  been  done,  they  had  been  led 

to  attempt  a  passage.  —  "The  water?  returned  (28)  and  covered 

all  the  host  of  Pharaoh  that  came  into  the  sea  after  them."  It  is  not 
declared  that  the  waters  overwhelmed  them  all,  but  1D3',  concealed  them, 
tfwept  them  out  of  sight,  either  beneath  the  surface,  or  back  upon  the 
shore.  —  "There  remained  not  so  much  as  one  of  them."  That  is,  none 
remained  embattled,  or  in  pursuit  We  are  by  no  means  told  that 
every  individual  perished,  Moses  relates  what  he  saw.  "  There  re- 
mained not  so  much  as  one  of  them "  in  his  view.  The  stronger  rep- 
resentation given  in  xv.  5,  requires,  as  before,  allowance  for  the  license 
of  the  most  animated  and  adventurous  form  of  poetry,  that  of  the  Ode. 
Compare  xv.  12. 

t  Exodus  XV.  25.    See  Stuart's  Grammar,  §  438,  a.  note. 


VII.]  EXODUS  XIII.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  153 

that  institution  referred  to  as  one,  respecting  which  the 
Israelites  had  received  previous  instruction ;  *  and  else- 
where t  an  historical  connexion  seems  to  be  assigned  to 
it  with  the  deliverance  from  Egypt.  I 

In  the  sixteenth  chapter,  we  read,  that  the  people, 
having  advanced  in  their  journey  as  far  as  "  the  wilder- 
ness of  Sin,"  were  distressed  for  want  of  food,  and 
were  miraculously  supplied  with  quails  and  with  manna. 
The  impression  is,  I  beUeve,  not  uncommon,  that  the 
supernatural  provision  of  quails,  during  the  journey 
through  the  wilderness,  was  frequent.  We  are,  how- 
ever, only  told  of  its  having  been  made  on  two  oc- 
casions.§ 

In  respect  to  the  provision  of  manna,  the  opinion 
which  prevails  (entertained,  no  doubt,  with  different 
qualifications  by  different  minds,)  is  substantially  as  fol- 
lows; that  the  food  miraculously  furnished  was  made  to 
descend  from  the  sky ;  that  it  made  the  only,  or,  at  least, 
the  chief  food  of  the  Israelites,  during  their  forty  years' 
pilgrimage;  that  none  was  supplied  on  the  sabbaths,  while 
twice  the  usual  quantity  was  furnished  on  every  Friday ; 

•  Ex.  xvi.  23.  Compare  Ex.  xvi.  4,  5,  where  a  previous  institution  of 
the  sabbatical  rest  seems  to  be  implied. 

t  E.  g.  Deut.  V.  15;  Ezek.xx.  10-12;  Neh.  ix.  12. 

X  "  Miriam  the  prophetess,"  (xv.  20,)  nN'pJ ;  in  this  instance,  Miriam 
the  songstress.  Compare  Judges  iv.  4;  v.  1;  1  Chron.  xxv.  1,  2,  3. — 
"  Miriam  answered  them, '  Sing  ye  unto  the  Lord,  for  he  hath  triumphed 
gloriously;  the  horse  and  his  rider  hath  he  thrown  into  the  sea'"  (21); 
that  is,  Miriam  and  her  women  responded  by  singing  the  whole  Ode; 
as  we  should  say,   "Miriam  sang  *Sing  unto  the  Lord,'  and  so  forth." 

§  Viz.  those  referred  to  in  Exodus  xvi.  13,  and  in  Numbers  xi.  31. 
— **  Ye  have  brought  us  forth  into  this  wilderness,"  said  they,  (xvi.  3,) 
«« to  kill  this  whole  assembly  with  hunger."  "  Ye  shall  know,"  replied 
Moses  and  Aaron,  (6,)  promising  them  relief,  "  that  the  Lord  hath  brought 
you  out  from  the  land  of  Egypt."  —  Verse  10, 1  understand  in  connexion 
with  verses  11  and  12.  While  Aaron  was  addressing  the  people,  (10,) 
they,  for  the  greater  impression  on  their  minds,  were  made  to  see,  at  a 
distance,  a  glorious  cloud,  from  which  Jehovah  (11,  12)  gave  his  di- 
rections to  Moses. 

VOL.  I.  20 


154  EXODUS  XIII.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  [LECT. 

and  that,  during  the  Sabbath,  what  was  laid  up  for  that 
day  was  miraculously  kept  from  putrefaction.*  On  each 
of  these  particulars  I  am  briefly  to  remark. 

Manna  is  a  substance  well  known  in  natural  history. 
"At  this  day,"  says  Calmet,  "manna  falls  in  several 
places;  in  Arabia,  in  Poland,  in  Calabria,  in  Mount 
Libanus,  and  elsewhere.  The  most  common  and  the 
most  famous  is  that  of  Arabia,  which  is  a  kind  of  con- 
densed honey,  found  in  the  summer  time  on  the  leaves 
of  trees,  on  herbs,  on  the  rocks,  or  on  the  sand,  of 
Arabia  Petraea.  It  is  of  the  same  figure  as  Moses  de- 
scribes. That  which  is  gathered  about  Mount  Sinai 
has  a  very  strong  smell,  which  it  receives  from  the 
herbs  on  which  it  falls."  This  being  so,  the  supposition 
of  the  miraculous  creation  of  a  new  substance  appears 
to  be  entirely  gratuitous.  The  case  seems  to  have 
been  the  same,  so  far,  with  the  manna  as  with  the 
quails.  Both  were  ahke  natural  productions.  The 
miracle  consisted  in  the  seasonable  provision  of  such 
quantities  of  them  on  this  occasion. 

Nor  can  any  different  inference  be  safely  drawn  from 
the  mentioii  of  the  manna's  having  been  rained  f  from 
heaven,  nor  from  that  medicinal  property  of  the  sub- 

*  So  our  learned  countryman,  Dr.  Harris,  in  his  "Natural  History  of  the 
Bible,"  p.  292.  "  It  fell  every  day  except  on  the  Sabbath ;  and  this  only 
around  the  camp  of  the  Israelites.  Every  sixth  day,  there  fell  a  double 
quantity,  and  though  it  putrefied  ajid  bred  maggots  when  it  was  kept  any 
other  day,  yet  on  the  Sabbath  there  was  no  such  alteration.  It  fell  in  so 
great  quantities  during  the  whole  forty  years  of  their  journey,  that  it  was 
sufficient  to  feed  the  whole  multitude  of  above  a  million  of  souls."  Some 
even  go  so  far  as  to  suppose,  that  there  was  a  miraculous  superintend- 
ence of  the  Israelites  in  their  collection  of  this  food,  so  that  no  man, 
through  any  accident,  gathered  either  more  or  less  than  an  omer.  But 
this  is  distinctly  contradicted  by  verse  17,  which  requires  us  to  explain 
verse  18  as  meaning,  that,  after  the  collection  of  an  omer  had  been  made 
according  to  each  man's  best  judgment,  the  quantities  were  equdized  by 
measurement. 

t  xvi,  4. 


VII. J  EXODUS  XIII.   1.  — XVIII.  ?7  155 

stance  now  known  under  that  name,  which  some  have 
supposed  to  render  it  unfit  for  Ibod.  —  As  to  the  latter, 
no  fact  in  physiology  is  better  established,  than  that  the 
system  easily  accommodates  itself  to  an  influence  of 
this  kind.  Calmet  quotes  an  authority  to  the  point, 
that  "  the  country  people  about  Mount  Libanus  eat  the 
manna  found  there,  as  others  would  honey  " ;  and  the 
property  in  question  would  even,  it  is  probable,  render 
this  food  particularly  salutary  for  persons  living,  as  the 
Israelites  were  now,  in  circumstances  'resembling  the 
unnatural  habits  of  a  camp.  —  As  to  any  force  of  the 
former  expression,  any  thing  which  is  sent  in  abun- 
dance, is  said,  by  a  natural  figure,  to  be  rained.  Such 
a  use  of  the  word  is  not  considered  violent  even  in  our 
own  language ;  *  still  less  can  it  be  reckoned  so  in  the 
simplicity  of  the  Hebrew.f  And  Heaven,  by  an  easy 
metonymy,  is  frequently,  in  Scripture  language,  used 
for  God,X  so  that  to  say  that  the  manna  was  sent  from 
Heaven,  is  simply  to  ascribe  its  provision  to  a  divine 
agency. 

The  supposition  that  manna  made  the  only,  or  the 
chief  food  of  the  Israelites  during  their  journey  through 
the  wilderness,  has  still  less  plausibility.  It  supposes  a 
permanent  need,  which,  to  all  appearance,  did  not  ex- 
ist. The  Israelites  were  not  journeying  through  a  mere 
waste  of  unproductive  sand.     Such  is  by  no  means  the 

•  So  Shakspeare ; 

"  Rain  sacrificial  whisperings  in  his  ear." 

But  particularly,  how  natural  such  a  form  of  speech  is,  in  respect  to 
an  abundant  vegetable  product,  the  source  of  which  it  is  not  intended  to 
describe  with  technical  accuracy,  is  apparent  in  the  article  of  Calmet, 
quoted  above.  "  At  this  day,"  he  says,  "  manna  falls  in  Arabia,"  but 
■when  he  proceeds  to  treat  of  it  more  exactly,  he  describes  it  as  exuding 
from  a  tree.  Late  discoveries  seem  to  show  that  it  is  obtained  by  the 
puncture  of  an  insect    See  Gesenius's   Lexicon,  Art.  jjj. 

■f  See  Psalm  xi.  6;  Job  xx.  23. 

t  Matthew  xxi.  25 ;  Mark  xi.  30,  31 ;  Luke  xx.  4,  5 ;  Dan.  iv.  23  (26.) 


166  EXODUS  XIII.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  [LECT. 

import,  either  in  the  Old  Testament  or  the  New,  of 
the  words  translated  "wilderness."  On  this  point,  it 
is  enough  to  say  here,  that  their  marches  through  the 
wilderness  brought  them  to  many  cities,  or  posts,  which 
are  named,*  and  that  they  were  accompanied  by  their 
cattle,  which,  on  the  one  hand,  must  have  found  grazing 
ground,  for  the  manna  was  not  suitable  food  for  them, 
and,  on  the  other,  might  have  served  their  owners  for 
part  of  their  food.  The  thirty-fifth  verse,  as  far  as  I 
know,  is  the  only  authority,  which  could  be  appealed 
to  in  behalf  of  the  opinion  of  a  standing  miracle  in  this 
instance.  But  even  if  it  was  written  by  Moses,t  it 
can  by  no  means  be  safely  affirtned  to  signify  more,  than 
that  such  use  as  the  Israelites  made  of  manna,  whether 
more  or  less  frequent,  was  discontinued  after  they  passed 
from  the  wilderness  into  Palestine.  .That  they  did  use 
other  food  than  manna  during  this  time,  is  also  a  neces- 
sary inference  from  a  passage  in  Deuteronomy.f  And 
had  it  been  otherwise,  one  might  ask,  why  it  was,  that, 
on  the  first-related  provision  of  manna,  Moses  issued  a 
command  from  the  Lord,  "  Fill  an  omer  of  it  to  be  kept 
for  your  generations,  that  they  may  see  the  bread, 
wherewith  I  have  fed  you  in  the  wilderness."  If  the 
provision  was  constantly  repeated  through  forty  years, 
it  might  rather  be  supposed,  that  the  time  for  a  specimen 
of  it  to  be  laid  up  for  preservation,  would  be  when  the 
supply  was  about  to  be  discontinued.  It  is  true,  that 
in  the  eleventh  chapter  of  Numbers,^  we  read  of  manna 

*  See  Numbers  xxxiii.  6-37. 

t  I  make  thia  qualification,  because  there  can  be  littfe  doubt,  in  any 
mind,  that  verse  36  is  one  of  those  texts,  which  are  to  be  understood  as 
inserted  after  the  time  of  Moses.  He  would  hardly  have  set  down  the 
definition  of  a  measure,  which  was  in  common  use  in  his  day.  And  if  he 
did  not  write  this  verse,  it  is  natural  to  adopt  the  same  opinion  concern- 
ing the  preceding,  which,  like  it,  has  the  appearance  of  a  gloss,  and  is 
intimately  connected  with  it 

X  ii.  6.  §  Verses  6- 9. 


VII.]  EXODUS  XIII.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  157 

as  being  still  in  use  at  a  little  later  period  of  the  history. 
But  nothing  there  said  of  it  indicates  the  supply  to  have 
been  of  a  miraculous  nature,  either  as  to  time,  quantity, 
or  any  other  particular.  Once  more,  the  supply  of 
manna  is  spoken  of  in  the  same  terms  as  that  of  quails, 
which  latter  there  is  no  reason  whatever  to  regard  as 
having  been  permanent,  or  frequent.* 

Again ;  the  idea  of  a  permanent  suspension  of  the 
supply  on  the  Sabbaths,  and  a  miraculous  distinction  in 
its  quantity  between  Fridays  and  other  days,  will  not, 
I  think,  be  found  capable  of  bearing  examination.  Man- 
na being  a  substance  liable  to  putrefy,  if  kept  in  its 
natural  state,  the  Israelites  were  directed  to  gather  no 
more  of  it  than  a  convenient  specified  quantity,  and  not 
to  keep  any  portion  by  them.  But  this  rule  was  sus- 
pended for  the  day  preceding  the  Sabbath ;  and  "  it 
came  to  pass  that  on  the  sixth  day  they  gathered  twice 
as  much  bread,  two  oniers  for  one  man ;  and  all  the 
rulers  of  the  congregation  came  and  told  Moses." 
What  the  rulers  of  the  congregation  came  and  told 
Moses  was,  not  that  more  manna  had  been  furnished 
and  might  be  gathered  on  that  day  than  on  the  pre- 
ceding days,  but  that  more  had  actually  been  gathered 
by  the  people.  For  aught  that  appears,  they  might,  as 
far  as  the  quantity  accessible  to  them  was  concerned, 
have  gathered  a  double  quantity  as  well  on  the  pre- 
ceding days  as  on  this.  So  I  take  the  sense  of  the 
words,  "  He  giveth  you  on  the  sixth  day  the  bread  of 

*  Ex.  xvi.  8.  —  I  have  expressed  freely  the  doubts,  which  occur  respect- 
ing the  supposed  purpose  of  the  writer  to  represent  the  supernatural 
provision  of  manna  as  having  been  permanent,  and  not  merely  occasional. 
But,  after  all,  it  may  have  been  necessary  for  the  poorer  portion  of  the 
people  to  be  permanently  provided  for;  and  if  so,  there  could  be  no 
more  unexceptionable  way  of  affording  the  supply,  than  by  a  constant 
supernaturally  increased  production  of  a  natural  product  of  the  wil- 
derness. 


158  EXODUS  XIII.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  [LECT. 

two  days,"  to  be;  he  alloweth Ao  you,  he  permiiteth 
you  to  take,  on  that  day  a  double  portion.* 

But,  it  will  be  said,  we  are  expressly  told,  that  "  there 
went  out  some  of  the  people,  on  the  seventh  day  for  to 
gather,  and  they  found  none/'  f  We  are  told  this  ;  and 
so  much,  and  no  more,  I  think  it  was  probably  in- 
tended that  we  should  understand.  We  are  told,  that, 
on  one  occasion,  at  the  time  to  which  it  properly  be- 
longed to  enforce  the  obligation  of  a  strict  observance 
of  the  Sabbath,  this  remarkable  distincdon  was  made 
between  the  Sabbath  and  other  days.  The  lesson, 
once  given  in  this  striking  manner,  it  is  not  to  be  pre- 
sumed would  need  repetition  in  the  same  way.  And 
to  suppose  a  weekly  repetition  of  such  a  miracle  through 
forty  years,  is  to  make  a  supposition  equally  without 
apparent  support  in  the  reason  of  the  case,  or  in  the 
letter  of  Scripture. J 

Again ;  that  it  was  not  by  a  miracle,  but  by  a  culina- 
ry process,  recommended  by  Moses,  that  the  manna 
reserved  for  use  on  the  Sabbath  was  kept  from  corrup- 
tion, is,  I  conceive,  sufficiently  apparent  from  the  twenty- 
third  and  twenty-fourth  verses.  We  gather  from  them, 
that  though  preferred  in  its  natural  state,  either  on 
account  of  the  greater  palatableness,  or  on  account  of 
the  trouble  of  preparation,  yet,  as  it  could  not  be  kept 
in  that  state,  and  as  it  must  not  be  gathered  fresh  on 
the  Sabbath,  some  way  of  preparing  it  was  to  be  pre- 
scribed, in  which  it  would  remain  a  litde  time  fit  for 
use.     Accordingly,  as  soon  as  it  was  reported  to  Moses, 

*  xvi.  19,  20,  22,  29.  I  add,  that,  if  no  manna  could  be  obtained  at 
any  time  on  the  Sabbath-day,  there  would  be  no  place  for  the  trial  of 
obedience  spoken  of  in  xvi.  4,  5. 

t  xvi.  27. 

X  "Ye  shall  not  find  it,"  (25,)  is  very  properly  interpreted,  "ye  shall 
not  go  to  find  it*';  and  "  in  it  there  shall  be  none,"  (26,)  is  equivalent  to 
"  there  shall  be  none  gathered." 


VII.]  EXODUS  Xm.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  159 

that  his  direction  respecting  the  collection  of  a  double 
quantity  had  been  observed,  he  proceeded  to  give  the 
further  order  respecting  the  method  of  its  preservation. 
"Bake  that  ye  will  bake  to-day,  and  seethe  that  ye  will 
seethe;"  —  bake  or  boil  what  ye  wish  to  keep;  for  it 
cannot  be  preserved  without  such  preparation. 

The  miraculous  production  of  water  by  Moses,  to 
supply  the  people's  thirst,  is  the  subject  of  a  simple 
narrative  in  the  first  part  of  the  seventeenth  chapter.  — 
In  the  latter  part  of  that  chapter,  we  read  of  a  skir- 
mish between  the  Israelites,  headed  by  Joshua,  and 
the  Amalekites,  a  roving  tribe  of  the  wilderness,  by 
whom  they  had  been  assailed.*  We  are  told,  that,  on 
this  occasion,  when  Moses'  hands,  weary  and  feeble, 
drooped  by  his  side,  no  longer  holding  up  the  staff  by 
the  extension  of  which  he  had  wrought  his  wonders  in 
Egypt,  and  which  was  the  acknowledged  symbol  of  his 
divinely  delegated  authority,  then  the  hostile  force  pre- 
vailed ;  but  that  when  they  were  sustained  by  Aaron 
and  Hur,  the  host  of  Israel  triumphed.  The  fitness  of 
this  divine  arrangement  (so  to  term  it)  will  appear  to 
us  on  a  moment's  consideration.  The  object  of  the 
miracles  connected  with  the  ministry  of  Moses,  after 
the  departure  from  Egypt,  was  primarily  to  establish  his 
authority  over  the  minds  of  the  people.  But  J;his  the 
mere  acts  would  not  do,  unless  there  were  some  out- 
ward sign  to  connect  them  with  his  agency,  and  make 
them  bear  testimony  to  him.  A  miraculous  rending  of 
the  earth,  for  instance,  without  any  word  or  other  sign 
of  Moses,  would  obviously  no  more  prove  his  divine 
legation  than  it  would  prove  that  of  any  other  man. 
But,  when  the  people  saw  the  banner  of  the  Lord  in  his 
hand,  (for  so  the  rod  is  called  in   the  evident  allusion 

•  xvii.  8-16.    The  assault  of  the  Amalekites  was  perhaps  to  obtain 
possession  of  the  copious  supply  of  water. 


160  EXODUS  XIII.  1.  — XVIII.  27.  [LECT. 

to  it  in  the  words  "Jehovah  nissi,"  "the  Lord  my 
banner,")  always  insuring  to  them  victory,  as  long  as  it 
was  raised,  and  leaving  them  to  defeat  when  it  sank, 
they  took  an  impressive  lesson  concerning  the  power 
which  he  was  authorized  to  exert  over  them,  and  the 
divine  protection  which  he  enjoyed,  shared  by  them- 
selves as  long  as  they  yielded  to  his  guidance.  This 
act  connected  Moses  with  their  success  against  the 
Amalekites,  as  much  as  the  extension  of  Moses'  rod 
over  the  Red  Sea  connected  him  with  their  miraculous 
passage  of  that  flood,  or  as  our  Lord's  declaration,  "  So 
be  it  done  unto  thee,"  connected  him.  with  the  cure 
of  the  centurion's  child.*  —  The  sense  of  the  last  three 
verses  appears  to  be;  Acquaint  Joshua  both  in  w^ord 
and  writing,  that  he  must  prepare  himself  for  a  continu- 
ation of  this  war,  which  he  has  now  so  successfully 
begun.  It  is  not  to  terminate  with  this  generation. 
The  people,  whose  future  leader  he  is  to  be,  must  ex- 
pect to  prosecute  it  in  the  next  and  in  others  still  more 
remote.! 

On  the  eighteenth  chapter  I  make  no  other  obser- 
vation than  one,  to  which  I  shall  presently  have  occa- 
sion to  recur.J  Before  the  people  received  at  Sinai 
what  we  technically  call  their  Law,  a  Common  or  consue- 

*  Matthew  viii.  13. 

f  The  text  is  doubtful  in  this  place,  the  versions  varying  in  their  au- 
thority ;  and  one  is  tempted  to  think  that  there  was  originally  a  parono- 
masia between  the  words  D3  and  ■'pj,  which  is  now  lost  by  a  change  in 
the  former  word,  of  J  to  3,  or  in  the  latter,  of  3  to  J. 

\  To  "  inquire  of  God,"  (xviii.  15,)  is  probably  understood  by  most  inter- 
preters of  Scripture,  as  indicating  an  application  to  the  Divine  Being 
for  some  supernatural  communication  of  knowledge.  But  it  is  evident 
that  Moses  here  uses  the  word  respecting  the  people's  resort  to  him  to 
be  instructed  in  their  rights  and  duties.  They  "  inquired  of  God  "  when 
they  came  to  Moses  for  his  arbitration  on  disputed  questions  ;  he  pro- 
nounced judgment  agreeably  to  established  principles  of  equity,  such  as 
God  is  understood  to  approve  ;  and  this  he  called  (16)  making  them 
"  know  the  statutes  of  God,  and  his  laws." 


VII.]  EXODUS   XIII.   1.  — XVIII.  27.  161 

tudinary  Law  was  already  in  force  among  them.  Moses 
administered  justice  to  the  people,  before  he  was  in 
possession  of  the  divinely  prescribed  code  for  his  rule. 
That  code,  when  it  was  promulgated,  took  the  place  of 
what  is  called  in  these  times  statute  laxo.  Accordingly 
we  are  not  to  expect,  as  is  perhaps  commonly  done,  to 
find  in  it  a  complete  system  of  jurisprudence,  deter- 
mining all  the  obligations  of  men  in  all  their  relations. 
Should  we  examine  it  under  this  prepossession,  we 
should  be  obliged  to  own,  that  it  left  many  chasms; 
that  there  are  many  important  questions,  belonging  to 
the  province  of  law,  which  it  does  not  touch ;  many 
particulars  of  the  relation  between  man  and  man,  which 
it  does  not  regulate.;  many  of  the  essential  wants  of 
every  society,  for  which  it  does  not  provide. 


VOL.  I.  21 


162  EXODUS  XIX.   1.  — XXIII.  33.  [LECT. 


LECTURE    VIII. 

EXODUS    XIX.   1.  — XXIII.  33. 

Constitution  of  the  Hebrew  State,  before  and  under  the 
Law.  —  The  Israelites  an  Agricultural  People.  —  Confed- 
eration of  the  Tribes. —  Jewish  Officers  in  Egypt.  —  Magis- 
tracy IN  THE  ^Wilderness.  —  Progressive  Character  of  the 
Legislation,  connected  with  the  Journal  Character  of  the 
Record.  —  Secular  Character  of  some  of  the  Laws.  —  Con- 
tents OF  the  Decalogue,  and  of  the  Rest  of  the  Code 
announced  upon  Mount  Sinai.  —  Incompleteness  of  the  Sys- 
tem.—  Minute  ani)  Rude  Character  of  some  Provisions. — 
The  Manner  of  Promulgating  the  Law,  suitable  to  give  it 
Authority. 

The  Israelites  within  three  months  after  leaving 
Egypt,  as  soon  as  they  could  become  in  some  degree 
accustomed  to  their  new  condition,  are  conducted  to 
Mount  Sinai,  to  receive,  with  suitably  impressive  ac- 
companiments, the  Law,  which,  through  their  whole 
future  national  existence,  was  to  be  the  basis  of  their 
civil  and  religious  institutions.  It  is  proper  that  we 
should  here  attend  to  some  important  general  character- 
istics of  the  Mosaic  legislation ;  and  I  would  preface 
my  remarks  upon  these  with  a  few  observations  on  the 
constitution  of  the  Jewish  society,  as  the  Law  found  it, 
and  as  the  Law  was  designed  to  shape  it. 

The  constitution  of  any  community,  in  respect  to  the 
relations  which  its  members  bear  to  one  another,  is 
perhaps  determined  by  nothing  so  much,  as  by  the 
prevailing  occupations  of  that  community. 

The  Jews  were  an  agricultural  people.  —  At  no  peri- 
od of  their  history  did  they  gain  their  subsistence,  like 


VIII.  ]  EXODUS   XIX.   1.  — XXIII.  33.  163 

the  aborigines  of  this  country,  by  the  chase ;  an  unset- 
tled mode  of  life,  which  forbids  the  growth  of  civiliza- 
tion, and  the  organization  of  a  well  regulated  society. 
—  At  no  early  period  of  their  history  were  they  ad- 
dicted to  those  pursuits  of  commerce,  which,  leading  to 
extensive  intercourse  with  other  nations,  tend  to  destroy 
a  people's  individuality,  and,  by  causing  large  accumula- 
tions of  wealth  in  the  hands  of  successful  adventurers, 
produce  inequality  of  ranks.  —  At  no  period  were  they 
extensively  employed  in  mechanical  arts,  an  occupation 
which  is  apt  to  make  a  people  quiescent  and  unwarUke. 
To  whatever  degree  they  exercised  these  arts  in  Egypt, 
it  appears  to  have  been  by  a  temporary  necessity  of 
their  enslaved  condition.  Artisans  they  had  in  the 
wilderness,  but  the  way  in  which  they  are  spoken  of,  in 
the  thirty-first  chapter,  is  alone  enough  to  indicate,  that 
their  occupation  w^as  pecuHar  to  a  few ;  and,  even  at 
much  later  periods,  such  incidental  references  as  we 
have  to  the  subject,*  indicate  that  the  needful  manu- 
facturing processes  were  carried  on  only  in  families. 

The  Jews  were,  through  their  whole  national  history, 
graziers  and  agriculturists.  Their  three  great  patriarchs 
led  a  nomadic  life,  as  we  read  at  length  in  the  book  of 
Genesis.  When  Jacob  went  down  into  Egypt,  his 
family  was  estabhshed  in  a  fixed  residence  in  Goshen, 
for  the  advantage  of  pasturage  for  his  flocks  and  herds ;  f 
and,  when  they  were  transferred  from  Egypt  to  Canaan, 
that  territory  was  divided  among  them  in  such  a  man- 
ner, as  to  make  every  man  a  permanent  landholder; 
and  the  inclination  to  commercial  employments,  which 
their  central  position  might  else  have  encouraged,  was 
effectually  checked  by  some  specific  enactments  for 
that  purpose. 

_»_a , — 

•  1  Chron.  iv.  21 ;  Prov.  xxxl  24. 

♦  Gen.  xlv.  10 ;  xlvii.  1  et  seq. 


'*> 


164  EXODUS   XIX.  1.  — XXIII.  33.  [LECT. 

Both  the  arrangements  last  named,  designed  to  make 
and  keep  the  Jews  an  agricultural  people,  will  hereafter 
attract  our  more  particular  attention.  At  present  I 
have  but  to  remark,  that  they  laid  (particularly  the  for- 
mer) the  basis  of  the  Jewish  social  state,  in  the  princi- 
ple of  equality  among  the  citizens.  Every  citizen  was 
the  possessor  of  an  entailed  inalienable  landed  property ; 
every  cultivator  was  himself  a  proprietor;  a  principle, 
which,  under  whatever  varieties  of  formal  administra- 
tion, would  seem  most  effectually  to  secure  the  spirit 
and  essence  of  a  republic. 

At  the  time  of  the  Exodus,  we  find  the  aggregate 
nation  made  up  of  a  confederacy  of  twelve  tribes  or 
clans,  named  after  their  respective  ancestors,  the  twelve 
sons  of  Jacob.  These  formed  together  a  federate 
sovereignty,  which  may  be  compared  to  the  districts  of 
Greece  in  ancient  times,  or  more  correctly,  though  still 
imperfectly,  to  the  Cantons  of  Switzerland  in  our  own 
day,  to  the  late  States  of  Holland,  to  the  clans  of  Scot- 
land before  the  union,  or  to  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica. We  shall  presently  read  of  the  tribes  having  their 
several  princes,  their  separate  military  organization,  their 
distinct  encampments,  and  eventually  their  respective 
territories  in  the  Holy  Land.  We  shall  read,  in  the  se- 
quel of  the  history,  of  single  tribes,  or  alliances  of  them, 
carrying  on  war  on  their  own  account,*  and  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  explam  some  of  the  most  important 
political  movements,  on  the  ground  of  jealousies  and 
rivalships  between  these  sections  of  the  nation. 

From  the  little  that  is  told  us  of  the  period  inter- 
vening between  the  settlement  of  Jacob  in  Egypt,  and 
the  emancipation  of  his  posterity  under  Moses,  we  do 
not  learn  how  far  the  people  were  trusted  with  any 
administration   of  their  own  affairs.     It  may  be  sup- 

*  Josh.  xvii.  14-18;  Judges  iv.  10;  1  Chron.  iv.  41  -43;  v.  18-22. 


VIII.]  EXODUS  XIX.  1.  — XXIII.  33.  165 

posed,  that,  dwelling  together,  as  for  the  most  part  they 
seem  to  have  done,  in  one  community,  their  conven- 
ience would  dictate  arrangements,  which  ^vould  be  pre- 
scribed, authorized,  or  tolerated  by  their  rulers,  for 
investing  suitable  individuals  of  their  own  number  with 
some  kind  of  official  prerogative.  Accordingly,  as  early 
as  the  time  when  the  first  movement  towards  emanci- 
pation was  made,  we  find  certain  Israelites,  sustaining 
this  relation  to  the  people,  made  instruments  of  Phara- 
oh's oppressions.*  Beside  these,  we  are  not  expressly 
told  of  any  Jewish  officers  before  Moses'  appointment 
of  Judges  agreeably  to  Jethro's  advice.  It  is  highly 
probable,  however,  that  there  was  already,  or  soon  after, 
something  in  the  nature  of  representative  government ; 
so  far,  at  least,  as  to  allow  of  convenient  mutual  con- 
sultation on  matters  of  common  concern.  Moses  is 
said  to  have  assembled  and  addressed  "all  the  con- 
gregation," t  by  which  can  hardly  be  meant  the  whole 
congregated  people,  (for  they  were  too  numerous  to  be 
addressed  at  once,)  but  rather  persons  authorized  to 
listen  and  act  in  their  behalf.  In  another  place  he  is 
represented  as  speaking  "  in  the  ears  of  all  the  congre- 
gation of  Israel  " ;  J  but  in  the  second  preceding  verse, 
he  is  only  said  to  have  collected,  in  order  to  this 
communication,  "all  the  elders  of  their  tribes,  and 
their  officers."  §  This  last  text,  where  it  speaks  of 
the    "  elders  "   of  the  tribes,   confirms  a  supposition, 

•  Called  in  Hebrew  D'ltOfc'  ;  a  word  which  our  translators  commonly 
render  "officers,"  but  generally,  on  the   authority  of  the  Septuagint, 

{y^aftfiart's)    "  SCrlbeS." 

f  Lev.  viii.  3-5.  |  Deut.  xxxi.  30. 

§  So  too  Deut.  xxix.  2.  Compare  10,  where,  however,  the  sense  is 
obscured  in  the  English  version  by  the  interpolation  of  the  italicized  word, 
tviih.  In  Numbers  i.  16,  xvi.  2,  Michaelis  even  proposes,  with  some 
plausibility,  at  least,  to  render  \N:np,  ""X"};:),  instead  of  "famous,"  and  "re- 
nowned," called;  that  is,  called  of  the  congregation,  or  deputed. 


166  EXODUS   XIX.   1.  — XXIII.   33.  [LECT. 

which  independently  would  be  extremely  natural,  that 
whatever  representation  existed  was  not  so  much 
of  formal  institution,  as  of  a  conventional  patriarchal 
character.* 

.That  progressive  character  of  the  Jewish  Law,  on 
which,  assuming  its  existence,  I  have  heretofore  made 
some  remarks,  here  forces  itself  upon  our  notice.  The 
establishment  of  the  code  in  all  its  details  was  a  work 
of  time.  Supposing  it  even  to  have  proceeded  entirely 
and  immediately  from  the  Divine  Mind,  still  it  was  fit, 
for  the  people's  sake,  that  they  should  first  be  made 
acquainted  with  its  leading  principles ;  and  subsequently, 
and  by  degrees,  with  their  forms  and  modes  of  par- 
ticular application.  Supposing,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
agency  of  Moses  in  respect  to  it  to  have  been  such  as 
I  suggested  on  a  former  occasion,!  then  we  should  ex- 
pect, that  its  outline  would  be  first  conceived  and  pro- 
mulgated by  him,  and  that,  by  the  benefit  of  further 
experience,  it  would  be  amended,  retrenched,  and  en- 
larged. And  in  either  case  we  should  expect,  for 
obvious  reasons,  what  we  are  actually  to  find,  as  we 
proceed ;  viz.  that  in  many  instances  laws  would  be 
first  announced  when  an  incident  occurred  to  call  for 
them,  and  that  exceptions  and  alterations  would  be 
made,  from  time  to  time,  agreeably  to  changmg  circum- 
stances. 

We  may  accordingly  clearly  distinguish,  as  I  think, 
in  the  last  four  books  of  the  Pentateuch,  three  separate 
editions,  so  to  call  them,  of  the  Law.  The  final  re- 
vision appears  in  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  where,  the 
people  being  about  to  occupy  a  settled  habitation, 
whatever  in  the  Law  was  peculiar  to  the  exigencies  of 
a  wandering  life  in  the   wilderness,  lost  its  use,  and 

•  The  same  is  the  inference  to  which  we  are  led  by  Exod.  iv.  29, 
xix.  7. 
t  pp.  145-148. 


VIII.  J  EXODUS   XIX.   1.  — XXIII.  33.  167 

whatever  had  reference  to  the  condition  of  a  more  regu- 
lated society,  rose  in  importance.  Through  the  books  of 
Leviticus  and  Numbers,  on  -the  other  hand,  which  contain 
the  nation's  history  at  the  first  stage  of  its  political  ex- 
istence, we  have  modifications  and  additions,  particularly 
to  the  religious  laws,  but  also  to  others;  we  have,  in 
short,  the  original  outhne  of  the  Law  filled  up,  by  de- 
grees, after  the  manner  which  has  just  now  been  hinted 
at.  That  outline  itself  was  given  in  the  passage  now 
before  us ;  viz.  in  the  twentieth  and  the  three  next 
following  chapters.  The  Law  promulgated  from  Mount 
Sinai  did  not  comprehend  the  whole  Mosaic  legislation ; 
but  essentially  it  was  an  epitome  of  the  whole.  The 
Jewish  people,  now  formed  into  a  social  state,  were  to 
be  apprized,  from  the  beginning,  on  what  leading  princi- 
ples their  society  was  to  rest ;  and  of  this  they  were 
to  be  informed  under  such  circumstances  as  would 
strongly  impress  their  minds  for  the  time  being,  prepare 
them  to  receive  whatever  further  communications  should 
be  made  through  Moses'  ministry,  and  form  a  striking 
record  of  divine  revelations  for  the  conviction  of  their 
descendants. 

Such  was  the  occasion,  and  such  the  character,  of 
the  first  compendious  Law  announced  upon  Mount 
Sinai.  And  here,  with  this  portion  of  the  narrative  be- 
fore us,  I  would  pause  a  moment,  to  recall  attention  to 
what  strikes  me  as  an  important  bearing  which  it  has 
upon  the  question  of  the  authenticity  of  the  books 
which  exhibit  it.  I  can  imagine  no  reason,  which  could 
have  influenced  a  writer,  not  contemporaneous  with  the 
promulgation  of  the  Law,  to  write  it  down  in  the  dis- 
jointed shape  in  which  it  has  descended  to  us.  Let  us 
place  ourselves  in  the  time  of  David,  or  of  Hezekiah, 
or  of  the  Judges,  or  any  other  time  subsequent  to  that 
of  Moses,  and  ask  whether  there  is  any  conceivable 


168  EXODUS  XIX.   1.  — XXIII.   33.  [LECT. 

State  of  mind,' in  which  we  could  havelGeen  induced 
to  commit  to  writing,  in  such  an  arrangement,  either 
what  we  had  received  as  the  ancient  code  of  our  na- 
tion, or  what  we  had  ourselves  devised,  and  intended 
to  impose  upon  the  faith  of  others,  in  that  character. 
Can  there  be  any  doubt,  that,  under  such  circumstances, 
we  should  give  the  Law  as  a  whole,  either  as  it  had 
been  actually  received,  or  as  we  desired  that  it  should 
be ;  digested,  at  least,  into  one  system,  and  probably 
with  some  formal  disposition  of  the  parts  ?  On  the 
other  hand,  attribute  the  writing  to  Moses,  and  all  is 
perfectly  natural.  It  was  fit  that  the  Law  should  make 
successive  advances  towards  completeness  and  precis- 
ion ;  that  it  should  not  all  be  made  known  and  fixed  at 
once,  but  be  gradually  modified  and  enlarged  according 
to  the  growing  and  altering  wants,  intelligence,  and  ex- 
perience of  the  people ;  and  that  as,  step  by  step,  it 
approached  its  mature  condition,  so,  step  by  step,  the 
record  should  be  made. 

We  have  here,  then,  I  think,  one  of  the  striking 
instances  of  that  journal  character  of  a  large  portion 
of  the  Pentateuch,  which  makes  it  so  exceedingly  diffi- 
cult to  attribute  its  composition  to  any  age,  subsequent 
to  that  of  the  occurrence  of  the  events  which  it  records. 
Supposing  the  composition  to  have  proceeded  from 
Moses,  we  have  a  satisfactory  account  of  the  form 
which  it  has  taken.  He  would  write  down  events  as 
they  occurred,  and  laws  as  they  were  delivered.  If 
some  incident  called  for  a  new  enactment,  the  enact- 
ment and  its  occasion  would  be  both  set  down  together. 
If  some  provision  was  qualified  or  suppressed,  the 
change  would  be  added  to  the  record,  but  the  original 
provision  would  still  keep  its  place.  But  who,  in  a  later 
age,  after  a  law  had  been  abrogated  and  disused,  would 
think  of  any  such  embalming  of  its  memory  ? 


Vm.]  EXODUS  XIX.  1.  — XXIII.  33.  169 

Is  it  said,  that  all  this  was  but  the  artifice  of  a  forger, 
who  designed,  by  such  an  arrangement  of  his  work,  to 
provide  a  basis  for  the  argument,  which  I  am  urging  ? 
I  submit,  on  the  contrary,  to  any  candid  mind,  whether 
the  fact  is  not  one  of  that  unobtrusive  class,  which 
never  would  be  devised  to  sustain  a  fraud,  since  it  is 
so  little  suited  to  attract  attention,  on  the  part  of  any 
but  the  studious  and  careful;  —  whether  it  is  not  one 
of  that  description  of  facts,  (so  powerfully  urged  by 
Paley  in  his  "  Horse  Paulinae,"  for  their  bearing  on  the 
authenticity  of  part  of  the  New  Testament,)  which, 
notwithstanding  their  reality  and  importance,  are  so 
latent  as  to  preclude  the  supposition  of  their  having 
been  devised  in  aid  of  an  imposture. 

Another  remark  to  be  made  upon  the  Jewish  Law, 
relates  to  what  I  may  term  its  secular  character.  Ac- 
customed as  we  are,  and  rightly,  to  think  of  the  Mosaic 
system  as  one  designed  for  rehgious  uses,  we  naturally 
enough  come  to  suppose,  that  the  positive  enactments 
of  its  code  will  all  be  found  to  bear  on  the  individual's 
religious  illumination  and  discipline.  In  a  certain  sense, 
no  doubt,  they  all  do;  for  when  a  divinely  approved 
rule  has,  for  any  purpose,  been  given,  the  individual's 
duty  and  improvement  are  concerned  in  obedience  to 
it.  But,  in  the  sense  in  which  the  supposition  is  com- 
monly entertained,  a  very  little  examination  shows  it 
to  be  erroneous.  We  shall  see  at  greater  length  here- 
after, but  already  we  may  partially  see,  in  this  first 
epitome  of  the  Law,  that,  while  many  of  its  provisions 
related  to  the  nation's  religious  security,  or  the  indi- 
vidual's religious  improvement,  others  belonged  rather 
to  the  class  which  the  civil  and  criminal  codes  of  all 
nations  'fembrace,  while  others  again  had  nothing  to  do 
with  abstract  duty  even  in  this  form,  but  were  merely 

VOL.  I.  22 


T70  EXODUS   XIX.   1.  — XXIU.  33.  [l-ECT. 

matters  of  police  regulation,  in  the  nature  (for  instance) 
of  health  laws. 

The  question  then  is  naturally  presented  ;  Whh 
what  propriety  are  laws,  which  do  but  tend  to  the 
ordering  and  security  of  a  prosperous  commonwealth, 
embraced  in  a  system,  designed,  as  that  of  Moses  has 
been  represented  to  be,  for  a  religious  use  ?  And  the 
proper  and  sufficient  reply  I  take  to  be  as  follows. 
The  operation  of  the  laws  in  question,  secured  what, 
humanly  speaking,  was  an  indispensable  means  to  the 
great  end  proposed.  In  order  that  the  Jewish  nation 
should  fulfil  the  office,  for  which  it  was  set  apart,  it 
was  necessary,  that,  for  a  time  at  least,  it  should  retsdn 
its  individuality  and  independence.  Overrun  and  sub- 
dued, at  least  at  any  earlier  time  than  when  recollec- 
tions of  past  national  glory  might  sustain  the  captive 
in  adherence  to  his  faith,  the  nation  would  inevitably 
lose  the  treasure  of  religious  truth  committed  to  its 
keeping.  But,  in  order  to  its  continuing  independent, 
it  needed  to  be  made  capable  and  desirous  of  main- 
taining its  liberty ;  it  needed,  in  other  words,  to  become 
numerous,  prosperous,  patriotic,  united,  and  strong. 
Thus  all  arrangements,  which  go  to  build  up  a  power- 
ful state,  —  even  such  as  regarded  the  general  health, 
such  as  tended,  within  suitable  Umits,  to  the  increase 
of  wealth  and  population,  such  as  would  generate  a 
national  felbw-feeling,  and  such  as  would  make  the 
public  resources  available  for  the  public  security,  —  as- 
sumed an  important  relation  to  the  great  end  proposed, 
and  came  within  the  contemplation  of  the  Jewish  Law. 
And,  further,  not  a  few  particulars  of  what  might  most 
strictly  be  called  domestic  institution,  will  be  found  to 
have  reference  to  the  peculiar  position  which  the  Isra- 
elites occupied,  and    to   have  been  designed  to  place 


Vlll.J  EXODUS   XIX.   1.  — XXlll.   33  171 

them  in  circumstances  to  execute  the  religious  trust 
they  had  received  for  the  world. 

When  we  come  to  examine  the  Law  in  this  its  prim- 
itive shape,  we  find  its  contents  to  be  actually  such, 
as,  on  the  ground  of  the  views  above  presented,  we 
might  expect.  Along  with  precepts  touching  the  rela- 
tion which  it  was  designed  that  the  Jews  should  bear 
peculiarly  to  God,  it  embraces  provisions  suited  to  meet 
any  community's  first  and  most  pressing  wants,  and 
principles,  which,  carried  out  into  their  applications  as 
they  were  designed  subsequently  to  be,  embrace  a  wide 
field  of  civil  legislation. 

In  the  Decalogue,  the  part  of  the  Law  announced 
earliest,  and  under  circumstances  of  peculiar  solemnity, 
we  immediately  remark  two  great  divisions.  The  first 
division  relates  directly  to  the  great  purpose  of  the 
Jewish  institution,  the  establishment  of  a  pure  and  un- 
participated  worship  of  the  One  True  God  ;  —  the  first 
commandment  prohibiting  the  acknowledgment  of  any 
other  deity ;  *  the  second  forbidding  any  address  even 
to    Him   through    that  medium   of  sensible  symbols,t 

*  "  Thou  shall  have  no  other  gods  before  me " ;  (xx.'  3 ;)  that  is,  not 
in  preference  to  me,  but  in  my  presence.  I  am  present  with  the  nation 
of  Israel.  Let  me  not  be  offended  by  the  acknowledgment  there  of  any 
other  God. 

t  "  Thou  shalt  not  make  to  thyself,  —  thou  shalt  not  bow  down  to  them, 
nor  worship  them;"  (4,5.)  that  is,  in  the  simple  Hebrew  idiom,  Thou 
shalt  not  make  them  for  the  purpose  of  bowing  down  and  worshipping  them. 
The  command  docs  not  forbid  the  mere  representation,  whetlier  by 
sculpture,  painting,  or  embroidery,  of  animated  objects  existing  in  nature. 
The  brazen  laver  of  the  temple  stood  on  sculptured  oxen.  Figures  of 
animals  were  embroidered  by  divine  command  on  the  hangings  of  the 
tabernacle,  and  cherubim  were  erected  even  in  the  most  Holy  Place.  — 
"  I  the  Lord  thy  God  am  a  jealous  God "  (5) ;  rather,  I  think,  zealous, 
determined,  a  well-ascertained  meaning  of  the  word  Nf.p,  and  better  cor- 
responding with  the  context  —  "  Visiting  the  iniquity  of  the  fathers  upon 
the  children"  (ibid.);  that  is,  in  national  calamities.  If  the  parents 
apostatize,  and,  deserting  my  service,  and  neglecting  my  laws,  in  which 


"<■ 


^^ 


.# 


*     EXODUS  XIX.  1.  — XXIll.  33.  [LECT. 


to  which  the  mind  of  man,  m  all  ages,  has  been  so 
prone  to  have  recourse,  to  aid  the  weakness  of  its  con- 
ceptions of  an  unseen  Divinity,  but  which  so  easily 
tends  to  a  substitution  of  the  sign  for  the  thing  signi- 
fied, as  the  object  of  the  worshipper's  faith ;  the  third, 
securing  to  the  name,  and  so  to  the  idea,  of  the  Di- 
vinity, the  reverence  which  it  rightfully  claims,  and 
which  it  so  concerns  the  worshipper  to  cherish ;  the 
fourth,  demanding  a  solemn  weekly  recognition  on  the 
part  of  the  nation,  and  of  each  one  of  its  citizens,  of 
the  religious  character  which  they  bore. — In  the  Second 
Table,  as  it  has  been  called,  of  the  Decalogue,  we 
find  the  elements  of  social  duty  distinctly  and  emphati- 
cally enforced.  The  great  human  interests  of  the 
human  being,  which  all  regulations  made  by  him  for 
security  in  his  social  state  are  designed  to  protect,  are 
life,  liberty,  property,  and  reputation.  The  first  of  these 
is  the  subject  of  the  sixth  commandment.  The  second 
is  at  the  mercy  of  all  abuses  of  government,  but,  in  the 
form  in  which  in  that  age  it  was  most  endangered,  it 
was  vindicated  by  the  eighth  commandment.*  The 
sacredness  of  property,  to  which,  as  far  as  the  subject 
now  under  examination  is  concerned,  the  integrity  of 
domestic  relations  belongs,  is  asserted  in  the  seventh 
and  eighth.  The  wickedness  of  assaults  on  character 
is  denounced  in  the  ninth ;  while,  through  the  exertion 
of  a  more  general  influence,  touching  all  points  of  a 
community's  well-being,  the  seventh  takes  care  of  that 
prevailing  purity  without  which  there  can  be  no  public 

are  the  elements  of  their  national  prosperity,  suffer  that  prosperity  to  de- 
cline, let  them  remember  that  they  will  not  be  the  only  sufferers.  Their 
unoffending  posterity  will,  according  to  the  invariable  course  of  human 
affairs,  pay  the  forfeit  of  their  unfaithfulness.  The  consideration  should 
warn  and  check  them.  They  should  feel  for  their  offspring,  if  they  are 
regardless  of  me. 
*  Compare  Exod.  xxi.  16. 


VIII.]  EXODUS  XIX.   1.  — XXIIl.  33.  173 

virtue  or  greatness,  any  more  than  individual  worth  ; 
the  fifth  lays  the  foundation  of  the  citizen's  virtues  in 
the  order  of  that  smaller  community,  the  domestic  cir- 
cle ;  *  and  the  tenth,  by  forbidding  the  allov^^ance  even 
of  those  desires,  which  tempt  to  wrong,  meets  and 
checks  at  their  spring  those  impulses  from  which  en- 
croachments and  disorders,  of  whatever  form,  commonly 
proceed. 

The  Decalogue  is  scarcely  more  than  an  assertion  of 
general  principles.  These  principles,  being  the  basis, 
on  which  all  subsequent  discipline  was  to  rest,  might 
well  deserve  to  be  singled  out  from  other  communica- 
tions, as  they  were,  and  announced  with  accompani- 
ments of  peculiar  impressiveness.  The  rest  of  the  Law 
given  on  Mount  Sinai  occupies  the  two  next  following 
chapters,  and  the  greater  part  of  a  third.  Without 
stopping  to  remark  at  length  on  the  sense  and  bearing 
of  its  several  provisions,  I  would  pass  them  here  in 
review,  that  it  may  be  seen  how  far  they  correspond 
with  the  description  given  above  of  their  design. 

A  subject  on  which  a  people  accustomed,  like  the 
Jews,  to  bondage,  would  probably  need  as  early  instruc- 
tion as  on  any  other,  is  that  of  the  relation  of  master 
and  servant;  and   with  this   accordingly  (after  a  few 

*  "  Honor  thy  father  and  thy  mother,  that  thy  days  may  be  long  in  the 
land  which  the  Lord  thy  God  giveth  thee."  (xx.  12.)  This  is  not,  I  suppose, 
what  it  is  commonly  understood  to  be,  the  extraordinary  promise  to  dutiful 
children  of  a  certain  enjoyment  of  long  earthly  life.  Jewish  history  gives 
us  no  evidence  of  its  having  been  fulfilled  in  this  sense.  I  understand 
the  promise  to  be  addressed  to  the  nation,  not  to  the  individual.  The 
national  life  would  be  long,  if  it  should  be  a  nation  distinguished  for  the 
prevalence  of  filial  piety,  the  foundation  of  all  other  social  virtues.  If  it 
be  said  that  this  interpretation  supposes  a  diversity,  in  the  same  sentence, 
in  the  use  of  the  pronoun  of  the  second  person,  singular  number,  since 
the  individual  is  there  called  on  to  show  filial  piety,  that  the  nation's  life 
may  be  long,  I  refer,  among  otlier  analogous  instances  which  might  be 
cited,  to  Deut  xvi.  1  -8, 18-20;  xxiii.  15,  16. 


174  EXODUS  XIX.  1.  — XXIII.  33.  [LECT. 

directions  of  a  strictly  religious  character,*)  the  com- 
pendious code  before  us  is  introduced,  while,  a  little 
further  on,  the  free  cidzen's  right  to  his  liberty  is 
guarded  by  the  heaviest  penalty,  denounced  against  the 
invader.t  The  subject  of  criminal  and  excusable  homi- 
cide, which,  of  course,  would  be  one  of  immediately 
imminent  concern,  is  next  somewhat  largely  treated.! 
Directions  respecting  minor  personal  injuries  follow, 
having  reference  to  their  aggravation.^  Property  is 
protected  by  various  detailed  provisions ;  ||  and  the  citi- 
zen is  made  responsible  for  consequences  of  his  negU- 
gence  in  all  the  three  last-named  respects. H  Laws 
against  injpurity  are  next  provided.**  Respect  for  pa- 
rents and  magistrates  is  enjoined,  a  sentiment  always 
needful,  and  never  more  so  than  in  the  present  partially 
organized  condidon  of  the  new  commonwealth.ff  The 
duties  of  equity  in  judicial  transactions,  J  J  and  of  human- 
ity and  mutual  support  and  aid  are  urged ;  and  the  latter 
movingly  enforced,  in  the  fit  cases,  by  considerations  of 
the  people's  own  recent  need  of  the  mercy  they  were 
now  called  upon  to  show.^§  One  short  direction  ||  || 
seems  to  have  had  reference  to  a  danger  to  which  they 
were  exposed  in  consequence  of  their  irregular  supplies 
of  food.  All  the  other  precepts  HH  relate  to  the  princi- 
ples or  the  observances  of  religion. 

*  XX.  23-26.  Verse  24  is  a  direction  to  abstain  from  erecting  any 
permanent  and  expensive  altar,  which  might  tempt  them  to  remain  in  one 
place.  The  object  of  the  provision  in  verse  26,  is  obviously  to  secure  the 
reverence  belonging  to  an  act  of  religious  worship  from  being  disturbed 
by  what,  according  to  the  views  of  the  age,  would  have  been  an  inde- 
corum. 

t  xxi.  1  - 11,  16.  t  xxi.  12  - 14,  18  -21 ;  xxii.  2. 

§  xxi.  15,22-27.  U  xxii.  1-5,7-15. 

f  xxi.  28-36,  xxii.  6.  **  xxii.  16, 17, 19. 

tt  xxi.  15, 17 ;  xxii.  28.  \t  xxiii.  1  -  3,  6-8. 

§§  xxiL  21  -  27  ;  xxxiii.  4,  5,  9.  jj  ||  xxii.  31. 

HH  Viz.  in  xxii.  18,  20,  29, 30 ;  xxiii  10  - 19. 


I 


VIII.]  EXODUS   KIX.    1.  — XXIII.  33.  175 

It  might  be  remarked  of  a  small  number  of  these 
laws,*  that  they  seem  little  suitable  for  the  people's 
observance  under  their  present  unsettled  circumstances. 
To  this,  it  appears  to  me  a  sufficient  reply,  that  there 
is  no  reason,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  why  the  knowl- 
edge of  institutions  and  practices  which  were  designed 
for  the  people's  permanent  observance,  should  be  re- 
served till  the  favorable  time  for  such  observance  arrived. 
On  the  contrary,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  it  would  be  alto- 
gether fit  and  useful,  that  theu*  obligation  should  be 
announced  beforehand,  and  kept  in  prospective  view. 
Further,  nothing  would  seem  more  suitable  to  enforce 
the  obligation  of  practices  of  a  given  kind,  which  there 
was  already  opportunity  to  observe,  than  to  add  that 
there  were  others  of  the  same  class  and  tenor,  which 
would  be  demanded  as  soon  as  opportunity  should  per- 
mit ;  and  such,  it  will  be  seen,  on  reference  to  the 
passages  in  question,  is  actually  the  connexion  in  which 
they  are  found. 

Respecting  the  obvious  incompleteness  of  the  Jewish 
Law,  in  its  most  mature  state,  when  compared  with 
the  extent  and  variety  of  relations  and  exigencies  in 
social  life,  for  which  law  is  intended  to  provide,  there 
is  room  for  no  further  remark,  than  that  such  is  the 
universal  character  of  Statute  Law,  which  the  code  of 
Moses  has  been  already  observed  to  be.f  In  every 
nation,  established  practices  provide  the  basis  of  practi- 
cal jurisprudence,  constituting  that  Common  Law,  as 
it  is  called,  into  which  Statute  Law  does  but  intro- 
duce modifications  and  additions,  as  occasion  calls  for 
them ;  the  latter  being  accordingly,  of  its  nature,  an 
imperfect  system,  when  viewed  apart.  The  Jewish 
code  being  (as  far  as  matters  of  mere  civil  regulation 
are   concerned)   a  collection  of  statutes,  is,  for  that 

•  See  xxiL  5, 29;  xxiiL  10, 11.  f  p.  161. 


176  EXODUS  XIX.   1.  — XXIII.  33.  [LECT. 

reason,  when  regarded  alone,  incomplete.  It  is  not  all 
the  law  which  the  nation  possessed,  since,  where  the 
current  law  was  good  and  useful,  there  was  no  need 
of  a  change,  and  therefore  no  need  of  a  statute ;  and 
even  when  it  was  not  good  or  useful  in  a  high  degree, 
still  it  might  be  tolerable,  and  therefore  left  undisturbed. 
And,  further,  that  such  was  the  fact,  we  shall  find  in- 
direct proof,  (which  is  all,  that,  from  the  nature  of  the 
case,  we  can  expect,)  when  we  come  to  read  of  some 
positive  directions  recognising  or  modifying  existing 
rights  and  customs,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Blood- 
avenger,  of  Nazarite  consecration,  and  of  Divorce. 

I  proceed  to  a  quality  of  the  Jewish  Law,  which 
perhaps  has  gone  as  far  as  almost  any  other  to  create 
a  distrust  of  its  divine  original.  I  refer  to  its  precise, 
circumstantial  character.  To  some  persons  it  seems 
unworthy  of  the  Divine  Mind  to  interest  itself  in  such 
minute,  and,  as  it  seems  to  them,  undignified  details. 
Is  it  credible,  they  would  ask,  that  the  Majesty  of 
Heaven  and  earth  will  ascribe  any  importance  to  the 
materials  and  the  manner  of  erecting  and  furnishing 
a  house  for  his  worship  ;  the  attitudes  and  the  cos- 
tume of  the  w'orshipper ;  discriminations  of  places, 
times,  and  food,  and  other  such  minor  matters  as  the 
Jewish  Law  is  largely  concerned  in  regulating ;  or  that 
he  should  condescend  to  require  numerous  peculiar 
personal  observances,  of  which  the  reason  is  to  be 
sought  neither  in  their  mtrinsic  usefulness,  nor  in  any 
permanent  obligation? 

It  seems  to  me  that  there  lies  at  the  basis  of  this 
argument,  an  error,  which  is  also  carried  into  various 
other  applications.  We  judge  of  the  Almighty  too 
much  by  ourselves.  Our  estimate  of  the  divine  great- 
ness is  formed  too  much  upon  our  notion  of  that  hu- 
man greatness,  which   never  can   do  better  than  to 


VIII.]  EXODUS  XIX.  I.  — XXIII.  33.  177 

choose  between  different  forms  of  power  and  action, 
because  all  varieties  of  power  and  action  at  once  are 
not  within  its  competency.  No  man,  however  effi- 
cient, can  do  all  things.  The  most  effective  men, 
accordingly,  are  naturally  appointed  to,  or  assume,  the 
weightier,  more  comprehensive,-  and  therefore,  as  we 
say,  more  dignified  tasks ;  while  the  less  effective  are 
devoted  to  plans  and  agencies  of  a  less  extensive,  and, 
accordingly,  as  we  account  them,  a  meaner  character. 
Through  their  partial  power,  the  men  who  are  equal  to 
the  more  imposing  cares,  and  therefore  are  assigned  to 
such,  find  it  necessary  to  relinquish  the  less  important, 
and  devolve  them,  for  the  most  part,  on  persons  of  less 
capacity  and  pretension.  Accordingly,  occupation  in, 
and  concern  for,  mere  details,  comes  to  seem  to  us  in- 
consistent with  the  idea  of  human  greatness  ;  and, 
transferring  this  view  to  the  Divine  Being,  we  come 
hastily  to  conclude,  that  such  occupation  and  concern 
would  be  also  unworthy  of  him. 

I  suppose  that  it  is  chiefly  through  this  way  of  rea- 
soning, or  rather  through  this  impression,  that  the  great 
doctrine  of  a  particular  Providence  labors  under  a 
prejudice.  Many  men  think  it  unworthy  of  God  to 
take  care  of  the  litde,  as  if  it  were  not  the  greatest 
glory  of  the  greatest  intelligence  to  be  able  and  dis- 
posed to  take  care  of  the  great  and  the  little  both. 
But  does  any  reflecting  mind  doubt,  that  what  is  so 
often  considered  a  concomitant  and  character  of  human 
greatness,  is  itself  a  result  and  sign  of  the  impotence 
and  Umitations  of  that  greatness  ?  Would  not  the  mind, 
which  could  dispose  the  most  largely  of  both  princi- 
ples and  details,  be  the  greatest  mind;  and  to  object 
to  an  administration  which  developes  both  of  these  char- 
acters, that  it  cannot,  for  that  reason,  proceed  from 
God,  is  not  this  to  find  an  argument  against  his  opera- 

voL.  I.  23 


178  EXODUS  XIX.  1.  — XXIII.  33.  [LECT. 

tion,  in  one  of  the  very  signatures  of  an  agency,  to  which, 
in  its  fullest  extent,  he  alone  of  all  beings  is  competent  7 

From  this  preliminary  remark,  I  go  on  to  submit, 
that  the  fact,  which  has  given  rise  to  it,  so  far  from  im- 
peaching the  divine  origin  of  the  Mosaic  institutions,  is 
in  reality  a  contribution  to  the  evidence  in  its  favor. 
It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  that  the  reasons  which  ex- 
isted for  those  apparently  minute  provisions  can  be  fully 
ascertained  at  this  distance  of  time ;  but  one  hazards 
nothing  in  saying,-  that  the  more  they  have  been  judi- 
ciously investigated,  the  more  satisfactorily  have  they 
appeared  to  be  parts,  wisely  designed,  of  a  law,  which 
w^as  to  rescue  a  barbarous  and  irreligious  people  from 
universal  barbarism  and  idolatry,  to  fix  them  in  the  wor- 
ship of  one  God,  and  to  form  them  to  be  the  instruments 
of  introducing  a  true  theology  into  the  world.  They 
were  the  expedients  of  a  suitable  discipline  for  effect- 
ing that  general  civilization,  out  of  which  a  high  personal 
religious  culture  was  ultimately  to  grow. 

My  point  then,  is,  that  the  circumstances  of  the  Jew- 
ish nation,  when  it  received  the  Law,  were  such,  that 
the  appropriate  instrument  of  their  discipline  was  neces- 
sarily, as  far  as  we  can  see,  a  ceremonial  and  precise 
system ;  a  system  which  should  prescribe  a  ritual  of 
worship,  and  a  course  of  conduct  in  common  life,  with 
great  fulness  and  exactness.  At  the  time  when  Moses' 
Law  was  promulgated,  we  know  not  that  there  was 
any  thing  deserving  to  be  called  religion  in  the  world, 
except  what  little  might  be  said  to  exist  among  the 
Jews  themselves ;  and  among  them  we  have  no  knowl- 
edge that  any  religious  rites  were  practised,  except 
that  of  sacrifice,  which  had  been  observed  from  the 
earliest  antiquity,  and  that  of  circumcision,  which  had 
been  prescribed  to  Abraham,  but,  in  the  reverses  of  his 
descendants,  had  probably  fallen  almost  into  disuse. 


Vin.]  EXODUS  XIX.   1-.-XXII1    33.  179 

Wherever  society  existed  near  them,  whether  among  the 
wholly  savage  Canaanites,  or  among  the  more  polished, 
rather  than  more  cultivated  Egyptians,  it  was  in  a  state 
of  extreme  debasement.  And  the  chosen  family  were 
no  longer  what  they  had  been,  when  they  went  down 
into  Egypt  to  share  the  splendid  fortunes  of  Joseph. 
Ages  of  miserable  servitude  had  broken  their  spirit,  and 
brought  them  to  that  condition  of  mental  imbecility, 
which  is  the  worst  effect  of  oppression  and  of  bodily 
hardships ;  nor  do  we  know  that,  surrounded  as  they 
had  been  by  the  corrupting  idolatry  of  Egypt,  they  had 
preserved  among  themselves  any  acqijaintance  with  re- 
ligious truth,  beyond  a  remote  tradition  that  Jehovah 
had  revealed  himself  to  their  fathers  as  their  patron 
God. 

This  rude,  depressed,  degraded  people,  were  to  re- 
ceive a  pure  theology,  that  so  they  might  be  instrumental 
in  preparing  the  world  for  further  revelations  of  divine 
truth.     With  them  a  course  of  discipline  was  to  be  be- 
gun ;  and  the  point,  from  which  it  was  to  raise  them, 
w^as  a  low  condidon  of  intellectual  and  moral  debase- 
ment.    This  being  understood,  let  us  ask  what  course 
human  wisdom  would  have  resorted  to,  to  effect  the 
object.     Would  a  sagacious  human  legislator,  desiring 
to  civilize  a  barbarous  tribe,  begin  by  giving  them  a 
system  of  laws  (however  good  in  other  respects),  so 
general  in  their  terms,  that  much  exercise  of  judgment 
would  be  necessary  in  the  application  of  them  ?     Or 
would  he  see,  that,  should  he  do  so,  their  stupidity,  and 
the  very  wrong  biases  which  it  was  his  purpose  to 
correct,  would  make  such  a  labor  vain ;  and  that  the 
only  effectual  way  to  confine  them  to  the  right  path  was 
to  forbid,  in  a  careful  enumeration,  such  external  practi- 
ces, as  would,  in  any  way,  have  an  influence  to  keep 
them  in  their  existing  state,  and  enjoin  with  equal  par- 


180  EXODUS  XIX.  l.-XXIII.  33.  [LECT. 

ticularity,  those  actions,  the  doing  of  which  would  have 
a  tendency  to  withdraw  them  from  that  state  ?  Would 
he  reverse  the  natural  order  of  instruction ;  or  would  he 
follow  the  example  of  the  parent,  who,  while  his  child's 
comprehension  is  as  yet  immature,  educates  him  in  cer- 
tain outward  formalities  of  conduct,  that,  by  their  natu- 
ral influence  on  his  mind,  the  qualities  he  ought  to 
acquire  may  be  formed  in  him,  long  before  he  is  able  to 
understand  the  nature  of  those  qualities  ?  Would  a 
wise  legislator  give  to  such  subjects  at  once  the  best 
possible  law  ;  or  would  he  see,  that,  in  order  to  learn 
ultimately  to  respect  proper  limits,  it  was  needful  that 
they  should  first  learn  to  respect  some  limits  ?  Would 
he  expect  them  at  once  to  adopt  comprehensive  princi- 
ples of  self-restraint,  and  devise,  for  their  own  govern- 
ment, rules  founded  on  those  principles,  and  adapted  to 
their  existing  condition ;  or  would  he  perceive  that  his 
prospect  of  restraining  them  was  the  better,  the  more 
definitely  he  declared  to  them  what  particular  things 
they  should  do  and  forbear  ? 

We  have  found  these  questions  answered  in  every 
successful  attempt,  of  which  we  may  have  read,  to  civil- 
ize a  barbarous  people.  And  that  which  it  is  wise  in 
man  to  do,  is  it  not  wise  in  God  to  do  more  com- 
pletely ?  Was  it  an  acknowledged  proof  of  the  wisdom 
of  a  sovereign,  who,  in  the  last  century,  reclaimed  from 
barbarism  a  nation  now  unrivalled  in  power,  that  he 
adapted  his  laws  to  the  rude  state  in  which  those  laws 
found  his  subjects ;  *  and  is  it  not  consistent  with  God's 

*  For  an  account  of  some  reforms  of  Peter  the  Great,  see  Perry's 
"  State  of  Russia  under  the  present  Czar,"  pp.  194  -  203 ;  Voltaire's 
"Histoire  de  I'Empire  de  Russie  sou*  Pierre  le  Grand,"  Tome  i.  chap.  10. 
In  Coxe's  "  Travels,"  Book  4,  chap.  4,  may  be  found  a  remarkable  set 
of  minute  directions  prescribed  by  that  monarch  for  the  regulation  of 
social  intercourse.  —  The  point  might  be  largely  illustrated  from  any 
collection  of  the  laws  of  a  people,  judiciously  guided  in  taking  the  first 


VIII.  3  EXODUS  XIX.   1.- XXIII.  33.  181 

wisdom,  that,  by  means  of  a  system  only  differing  from 
this  in  being  far  more  elaborately  and  thoroughly  adjust- 
ed to  its  end,  he  saved  a  people  from  that  idolatry 
which  seemed  the  almost  unconquerable  sin  of  the 
ancient  world,  and  prepared  them  to  fulfil  the  great 
office  with  which  they  were  intrusted  for  mankind  ? 

Particulars  of  this  fitness  and  eflScacy  of  circumstan- 
tial laws  will  offer  themselves  to  oui:  attention,  as  we 
proceed.  I  close  this  lecture  with  a  few  words  on  the 
manner  of  giving  the  Law. 

As  far  as  we  could  undertake  to  form  any  judgment 
on  the  subject,  we  should  expect  to  find  such  a  fqrm 
of  annunciation  selected,  as  would  tend  to  make  a  pro- 
found and  effectual  impression ;  an  impression  both  of 
the  obligation  of  the  Law,  as  then  prescribed,  and  of 
Moses'  authority  in  whatever  he  should  further  declare. 
Such,  in  the  highest  degree,  was  the  manner  of  annun- 
ciation adopted  in  ■  the  audible  utterance  of  the  Deca- 
logue from  the  flaming  and  smoking  top  of  Sinai ;  and 
that  the  reason  of  its  adoption  was  what  I  have  sug- 
gested, is  not  only  probable ;  it  is  likewise  expressly 
declared.*  The  impression  could  hardly  have  been 
made  stronger,  —  it  might  probably  have  been  weaken- 
ed, —  by  a  continuance  of  the  sublime  phenomenon ; 
and  accprdingly,  through  Moses,  whose  authority  it  had 
attested,  the  rest  of  the  communication  is  made.f  The 
impression  would  be  still  further  increased,  by  com- 
manding the  people,  on  their  part,  to  observe  the  fit 

steps  towards  civilization.  See  Gladwin's  "  Ayeen  Akbery,  or  Institutes 
of  tlio  Emperor  Akber;"  Wilkins's  "Leges  Anglo-Saxonicse."  In  Tur- 
ner's "  History  of  the  Anglo-Saxons,"  Book  11,  is  an  account  of  the  Saxon 
legislation,  showing  it  to  have  been  marked  with  the  character  under  our 
notice.  Specimens  of  that  legislation,  of  the  same  purport,  may  be  found 
in  Henry's  "  History  of  Great  Britain,"  No.  3  of  the  Appendix  to  Book 
2.  —  See  also  Montesquieu's  "Spirit  of  Laws,"  Book  19. 

*  Ex.  xix.  9,  XX.  20.  t  K*-  xx.  19,  21,  22 ;  xxi.  1. 


182  EXODUS  XIX.   1.  — XXIII    33.  [LECT. 

demonstrations  of  that  awe,  with  which  the  miraculously 
manifested  presence  of  God  should  inspire  them ;  and 
such  is  the  obvious  design  of  some  other  directions.* 

•  xix.  10-15,  21-24.  Another  object  of  the  arrangement  in  verse 
12,  might  be  to  give  its  full  effect  to  the  exhibition  of  the  phenomena 
presented,  which  were  of  each  a  nature  that  they  might  best  be  seen  at  a 
distance.  A  cloud,  for  instance,  is  not  visible  to  him  whom  it  envelopes.  — 
"  There  shall  not  (verse  13)  a  hand  touch  t/,"  13  J' Jn  ;  rather,  touch  him. 
The  offender  is  not  to  be  pursued  within  the  barrier  to  be  slain,  else  the 
pursuer  would  himself  repeat  the  offence  ;  "  He  shall  surely  be  stoned,  or 
shot  through,"  that  is,  with  a  javelin,  from  a  distance. — "  Let  all  the  priests 
also,  which  come  near  unto  the  Lord,  sanctify  themselves"  (verse  22). 
Who  were  these  priests  ?  Those  contemplated  by  the  Law  were  not  yet 
consecrated.  There  might  have  been  some  temporary  priesthood.  Com- 
pare iii.  18 ;  xxiv.  5.  But  I  prefer  to  understand  the  word  D'jri^,  to 
mean  chief  men,  as  the  Chaldee  paraphrasts  often  render  it  Compare 
2  Sam.  viii.  18;  1  Chron.  xviiL  17.  —  "Behold  I  send  an  angel  before 
thee"  &C.  (xxiii.  20) ;  T|xSd,  b.  messenger,  a  deputy,  a  representative,  as 
the  word  in  its  etymology,  and  usus  loquendi,  imports ;  apparently,  in  this 
instance,  Moses ;  and  agreeably  to  this,  verse  21  should,  I  tliink,  not  be 
rendered  "  Provoke  him  not,  for  he  will  not  pardon  your  transgressions," 
&c.  but  according  to  the  strict  meaning  of  the  vferb  ab},  "  It  is  not  he  who 
will  have  to  bear  with  your  transgressions,"  but  I,  whose  commission  he 
bears ;  "  my  name  is  in  him."  Compare  xix.  9.  Possibly,  however,  we 
should  rather  understand  by  the  angel,  according  to  another  use  of  the 
word,  that  manifestation  of  the  divine  presence  and  power  to  the  Israel- 
ites, which  from  time  to  time  was  to  take  different  forms,  as  different 
occasions  should  dictate. — "I  will  send  hornets  before  thee"  (28).  Our 
translators  have  given  this  version  without  any  good  authority.  The  word 
njT'^y  occurs  nowhere  else,  except  in  Deut.  vii.  20,  and  Josh.  xxiv.  12. 
The  etymology  would  make  it  mean  a  plague,  or.tortnent,  of  any  kind. — 
"  From  the  desert  to  the  river,"  (31,)  that  is,  the  Euphrates,  the  river  by 
eminence.    So  the  Euphrates  is  constantly  denoted. 

The  passage  here  last  commented  on  (xxiii.  20-32,)  assures  the  Israel- 
ites of  the  favors  of  Providence  which  their  nation  would  secure  by  obedi- 
ence to  the  rule  now  promulgated,  and  the  ruin  they  would  incur  by  its 
violation.  Making  needful  allowance  for  a  figurative  s^le  in  one  or  two 
verses,  (25,  26,)  such  prosperity  is  promised  as  would  naturaUy  follow  on 
a  nation's  observance  of  a  law  perfectly  adapted  to  its  wants. 


iX.J  EXODUS   XXIV.   1.  — XXVII.  21.  IgS 


LECTURE   IX. 

EXODUS  XXIV.   1.— XXVII.  21. 

Engagement  of  the  People  to  accept  the  Law.  —  Manifesta- 
tion OF  THE  Divine  Majesty  to  the  Jewish  Elders.  —  Re- 
turn OF  Moses  to  Mount  Sinai.  —  Nature  of  the  required 
Observance  of  a  weeklf  Sabbath.  —  Its  Design,  a  Commemo- 
ration of  the  Emancipation  from  Egypt.  —  Period  of  the 
Institution.  —  Examination  of  Passages  understood  to  refer 
IT  to  the  Time  of  the  Creation.  —  Nature  anp  Use  of  the 
Three  Annual  Festivals.  —  Rite  of  Circumcision.  —  Arrange- 
ments FOR  A  Place  of  National  Worship. 

The  outline  of  the  Law,  as  it  has  been  described, 
having  been  delivered  to  Moses,  he  is  directed  to  go 
and  communicate  it  to  the  people,  and  obtain  their  ex- 
press engagement  to  take  it  for  their  national  code. 
This  having  been  pledged,  he  proceeds  to  cause  the 
Covenant,  as  it  is  thenceforward  called,  to  be  ratified 
by  them  in  a  solemn  manner,  by  sacrificing  victims,  and 
sprinkling  their  blood  over  the  people,  when  the  "  book 
of  the  covenant "  (that  is,  of  the  covenanted  law  just 
received)  had  first  been  deliberately  read  in  their 
hearing.* 

This  done,  the  next  step  was  to  select  some  of  those, 
who,  from  the  station  which  they  ah*eady  held,  or  that 
to  which  they  were  to  be  raised,  were  capable  of  exert- 
ing a  peculiar  influence  over  the  people,  and  to  distin- 
guish them  from  the  mass,  in  a  manner  both  to  impress 
their  own  minds  with  a  sense  of  responsibiUty,  and  give 

*  xxiv.  3-8.  The  "  book  of  the  covenant  (7)  was  not  the  two  stone 
tablets  (compare  12),  but  the  record  which  Moses  had  written  (4)  of  the 
communications  that  had  been  made  to  him  in  the  mountain. 


184  EXODUS   XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.  21.  [LECT. 

them  consideration  and  authority  in  the  people's  view. 
To  this  end,  Aaron,  who  was  to  be  high  priest,  Nadab 
and  Abihu,  his  two  eldest  sons,  and  seventy  Israelitish 
elders,  were  called  up  to  an  acclivity  of  the  mountain, 
to  witness  a  glorious  manifestation  of  Jehovah's  majesty. 
They  themselves  were  not  to  "  come  near,"  that  is,  to 
that  top  of  Sinai  where  a  cloud  had  rested,  and  fire 
had  blazed,  and  a  voice  had  been  uttered  ;  for  a  differ- 
ence was  still  to  be  observed  between  Moses  and  them. 
But  they  were  to  ascend  to  the  precincts  of  that  spot, 
which  the  people  at  large  might  not  approach ;  and 
there  a  vision  was  presented  to  them,  of  a  nature  to 
give  them '  impulse  for .  the  work  assigned  to  them,  and 
confidence  in  Moses,  under  whose  guidance  they  had 
come  thither,  and  under  whose  supervision  they  were 
to  act.* 

Such  preliminary  arrangements  having  been  made 
for  the  people's  government,  Moses,  devolving  his  au- 
thority for  a  time  on  Aaron  and  Hur,  retired  into  the 
solitude  of  the  mountain  to  pursue  further  his  medita- 
tions, and  receive  further  instructions,  respecting  the 
economy  of  the  state  which  had  become  his  charge. 
Here  we  are  told  that  he  remained  "forty  days  and 
forty  nights."    Independently  of  such  use  as  this  pro- 

•  xxiv.  9-11.  As  to  the  glorious  appearance  in  the  sky  (10),  in  which, 
as  before  to  Moses  in  the  flaming  bush,  God  betokened  his  presence,  the 
Septuagint  has  a  different  and  more  satisfactory  reading.  "  They  saw 
the  place  where  the  God  of  Israel  stood,  and  under  his  feet,"  &c.  That 
is,  they  saw  a  splendor  in  the  sky,  above  all  earthly  things,  and  were 
made  to  know,  that  there,  in  heaven,  Jehovah,  the  God  of  their  nation, 
had  his  place  and  government.  —  •*  Upon  the  nobles  of  the  children  of 
Israel  he  laid  not  his  hand  ;  also  they  saw  God,  and  did  eat  and  drink " 
(11).  That  is,  so  far  from  being  distressed  and  panic-stricken  by  the 
vision  of  God,  as  might  have  been  supposed,  they  kept  a  festival  for  the 
honor  and  happiness  they  were  enjoying.  Or,  perhaps  better  ;■  on  them 
"  he  laid  not  his  hand,"  —  he  made  no  direct  communication  to  them,  as 
to  Moses  ;  so  that  they  "  did  eat  and  drink,"  differently  from  Moses,  who 
received,  fasting,  the  communications  made  to  him. 


IX.]  EXODUS.  XXIV.  l.  —  XXVIf.  21.  185 

tracted  seclusion  might  have  for  himself,  in  enabling 
him,  free  from  interruption,  to  mature  his  own  knowl- 
edge and  his  own  plans,  it  is  evident,  that  the  arrange- 
ment was  suited  to  make  the  people  feel  the  importance 
of  the  ritual  then  instituted,  and  regard  it  with  the  more 
veneration.  It  would  have  been  manifestly  unfit,  that 
they  should  look  upon  the  establishment  of  their  national 
worship  in  the  light  of  a  sudden  and  perfunctory  ar- 
rangement. For  a  time,  it  -would  appear,  he  was  left,  at 
this  interesting  crisis,  to  pursue  his  own  meditations. 
While  a  bright  cloud  covered  the  mountain-top  whither 
he  had  gone,  indicating  to  the  people  below,  that  he 
was  in  the  presence  and  audience  of  Jehovah,  six  days 
of  silence  were  given  him  to  collect  his  thoughts,  and 
on  the  seventh  the  instruction,  w  hich  he  had  been  sum- 
moned to  receive,  began  to  be  communicated.* 

The  step  which  we  should  expect  to  find  first  taken, 
in  this  posture  of  things,  would  be  the  provision  of  a 
suitable  place  for  the  national  worship.  Till  this  was 
done,  the  religious  ritual  could  not  go  into  operation, 
nor  would  there  be  any  central  point  of  interest,  to 
which  the  religious  and  patriotic  feelings  of  the  people 
might  turn.  We  accordingly  find  this  provision  next 
directed  to  be  made,  with  such  costliness  and  show  as 
the  means  of  the  people  permitted,  and  their  suscepti- 
bility of  impressions  from  such  a  source  made  fit ;  and 
in  the  form  that  was  dictated  by  the  wandering  life, 
which  they  were  for  some  time  to  lead.  "Let  them 
make  me  a  sanctuary,"  it  is  said  to  Moses,  "  that  I  may 
dwell  among  them ; "  t  and  very  minute  directions  are 
given,  through  three  chapters,  respecting  its  construction 
and  furniture. 

To  these  I  am  presently  to  give  particular  considera- 

*xxiv.  12-18.  fxxv.  8. 

VOL.  I.  24 


186  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.  21.  [LECT. 

tion.  But  first,  having  arrived  at  the  period  at  which 
the  religious  polity  is  reduced  to  form,  it  will  be  con- 
venient for  us  to  retrace  our  steps,  in  order  to  take  some 
more  distinct  notice  of  those  preceding  fundamental  re- 
ligious institutions,  the  weekly  Sabbath,  and  the  three 
annual  high  festivals,  w^hich  are  brought  together  in  one 
view,  in  a  portion  of  that  original  publication  of  the  Law, 
to  which  we  were  lately  attending.  The  rite  of  Ch'cum- 
cision  connects  itself  with  the  same  subject. 

Under  the  head  of  the  Sabbath,  the  three  great  ques- 
tions for  consideration,  are  those  of  the  manner  of  the 
celebration,  the  design,  and  the  period  of  the  institution. 

The  manner  of  celebration  was  simply  by  cessation 
from  labor.  It  is  an  erroneous  idea,  which  ascribes  to 
the  Jewish  Sabbath  the  use  of  the  Christian  Lord's 
Day,  as  being  a  season  for  religious  improvement,  through 
public  and  private  devotion.*  A  Jew  who  should  sit 
perfectly  unemployed,  or  even  who  should  sleep,  through 
the  day,  would  have  kept  the  Sabbath  with  a  punctili- 
ous observance.  "  In  it  thou  shalt  do  no  work,"  says 
the  command  in  the  Decalogue ;  and  this  is  the  length 
and  breadth  of  all  which  it  enjoins.  So  in  the  sequel 
of  the  law  published  on  Mount  Sinai ;  "  On  the  seventh 
day  thou  shalt  rest."  f  So  again  in  the  repetitions  of  the 
command,  in  connexion  with  the  building  of  the  Taber- 
nacle ;  "  On  the  seventh  day  there  shall  be  to  you  a 
holy  day,  a  Sabbath  of  rest  to  the  Lord;  whosoever 
doth  work  therein  shall  be  put  to  death."  |  And  so  in 
every  text  where  the  subject  is  treated.    Accordingly, 

*  It  has  been  common  to  draw  an  inference,  inconsistent  with  this 
statement,  from  2  Kings  iv.  23.  But  nothing  is  said  or  implied  there,  of 
worship,  or  other  religious  services.  The  Sabbaths  and  the  new  moons 
were  both  holidays,  and  therefore  suitable  for  the  offering  of  presents  and 
the  visiting  of  friends ;  and  accordingly  the  question  is  asked,  why  a  day 
should  be  chosen  for  visiting  Elisha,  which  was  not  the  customary  day. 

t  Elx.  xxiii.  12.  \  Ex.  xxxi.  14, 15;  xxxv.  2,  3. 


IX.]  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XXVil.  21.  187 

in  the  passage  where  we  read  of  the  punishment  of  a 
sabbath -breaker,  we  find  that  it  was  simply  for  doing 
menial  labor  that  he  was  punished.*  And  the  same  is 
the  offence  rebuked,  in  connexion  with  the  account  of 
the  sending  of  manna.f  It  is  true,  that  there  were  two 
other  subordinate  distinctions  of  the  day.  One  was, 
that  a  particular  sacrifice  was  •  to  be  offered  upon  it ;  J 
but  this  did  not  distinguish  it  from  many  other  days  in 
the  calendar;  and  what  is  more  important  to  be  re- 
membered, this  fact  in  no  degree  affected  the  individu- 
al citizen's  solemnization  of  the  day,  inasmuch  as  the 
sacrifice  in  question  was  only  one  national  sacrifice,  to 
be  offered  at  the  one  place  of  national  worship.  The 
other  peculiarity  of  the  day  was,  that  there  was  to  be 
upon  it  "  a  holy  convocation,"  §  by  which  appears  to  be 
meant  no  more,  than  that  there  shouU  be  an  assem- 
blage of  such  as  might  be  within  convenient  distance,  to 
witness  the  sacrifice  just  spoken  of,  or  perhaps  that 
there  should  be  festive  meetings  of  friends,  a  use  to 
which  we  know  that  the  day  was  actually  put.||  That 
there  were  any  Sabbath  meetings  in  the  early  Jewish 
times  for  religious  worship  and  instruction,  corresponding 
to  those  of  Christians  at  the  present  day,  there  is  no 
ground  whatever  for  believing.  At  a  later  period,  indeed, 
there  were  such  meetings  in  the  synagogues.  But  they 
were  no  provision  of  the  Law,  which  says  nothing  even 
of  synagogues.  They  appear  to  have  originated  after  the 
captivity,  when  the  people,  ignorant  of  their  sacred  lan- 
guage, needed  some  such  resource  for  obtaining  an  ac- 
quaintance with  the  requisitions  of  their  faith. 

This  view  of  the  nature  of  the  sabbatical  observance 
guides  us,  as  I  think,  to  a  right  apprehension  of  its  de- 

»  Numb.  XV.  32  et  seq.  t  Ex.  xvi.  27,  28. 

t  Numb,  xxviii.  9, 10.  §  Lev.  xxiii.  3. 

II  See  Luke  xiv.  1 ;  Hos.  ii.  11. 


188  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XX VII.  21.        [LECT. 

sign.  It  was  intended  for  a  weekly  national  commemo- 
ration of  the  national  deliverance  from  Egyptian  servi- 
tude. The  gratitude,  which  the  people  owed  for  that 
deliverance,  was  designed  to  operate  with  them  as  a 
motive  to  the  obedience  required  by  their  deliverer; 
and,  accordingly,  an  important  object  was,  by  reviving 
impressively  and  frequently  the  memory  of  the  deUver- 
ance,  to  excite  anew  the  gratitude  which  was  due  for 
it.  As  far  as  we  may  presume  to  judge,  there  could 
be  no  more  appropriate  way  of  doing  this,  than  by  a 
frequent  periodical  cessation  from  all  labor  whatever, 
presenting  the  strongest  contrast  to  the  rigor  of  those 
labors  imder  which  they  had  formerly  groaned.  So 
in  fact  the  Sabbath  is  represented  in  a  later  passage  of 
the  Pentateiich.*  And  repeatedly  we  find  it  spoken  of 
as  a  sign  between  God  and  the  children  of  Israel,  as 
well  as  mentioned  among  the  institutions  incident  to  the 
deliverance  of  the  nation.f 

And  here,  of  course,  I  am  met  by  the  remark,  that 
there  are  other  texts  of  the  Pentateuch,  which  speak  of 
the  Sabbath  in  a  quite  different  relation  ;  viz.  as  havmg 
been  instituted  at  the  beginning  of  earthly  things,  and 
designed  not  for  a  commemoration,  by  the  Jewish  peo- 
ple, of  their  deliverance  from  Egypt,  but  for  a  com- 
memoration, by  all  people,  of  the  creation  of  the  world. 
This  view,  and  its  grounds,  it  is  my  duty  to  consider ; 
in  doing  which,  I  ask  to  have  it  remembered,  that,  as 
far  as  our  remarks  have  hitherto  been  pursued,  we  seem 
to  have  proceeded  on  satisfactory  testimonies  of  Scrip- 
ture ;  and  that  he  who  should  adopt  any  different,  or 
any  further  views,  necessarily  assumes  the  task  either 
of  disproving  those  which  have  been  presented,  or  of 

•  DeuL  V.  15. 

t  Ex.  xxxi.  13-17;  Ezek.  xx.  10-12;  Neh.  ix.  14;  compare  9-21. 


IX.]  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.  21.  189 

showing  how  they  can  be  reconciled  w^ith  such  others 
as  he  finds  cause  to  entertain. 

The  first  text  which  would  be  referred  to  in  this  con- 
nexion, is  that  which  occurs  at  the  beginning  of  Gene- 
sis. "So  God  finished  on  the  seventh  day  his  work 
which  he  had  made ;  and  he  rested  on  the  seventh  day 
from  all  his  work  which  he  had  made;  and  God  blessed 
the  seventh  day,  and  sanctified  it ;  because  that  in  it  he 
rested  from  all  his  work  which  God  created  and  made."  * 

There  are  material  views,  bearing  upon  the  interpre- 
tation of  this  passage,  which  I  am  unable  at  the  present 
time  to  urge,  inasmuch  as  they  involve  principles  of 
exposition,  relating  to  the  whole  structure  of  a  book,  at 
the  examination  of  which  we  have  not  yet  arrived. 
When  we  have  advanced  to  the  readmg  of  that  book,  I 
shall  be  better  understood,  when  I  say,  that,  supposing 
the  latter  half  of  the  second  verse,  and  the  third  verse, 
to  be  genuine,  it  is  by  no  means  clear  that  any  institu- 
tion whatever  was  here  intended  to  be  spoken  of  by 
the  writer.  What  is  said  is,  that  "God  blessed  and 
sanctified  the  seventh  day."  He  pronounced  a  blessing 
upon  it,  —  he  commended  it,  —  because  (this  is  agreea- 
ble to  the  whole  anthropomorphitic  cast  of  the  passage)  it 
was  for  him  a  day  of  leisure  after  six  days  of  toil.  "  And 
he  sanctified  it."  How  ?  By  making  it  a  holy  human 
institution  ?  This  is  the  gloss  put  upon  the  word,  by 
force  of  an  opinion  derived  from  some  subsequent  texts, 
but  the  word  itself  impUes  no  such  thing.  It  signifies 
merely  "  to  set  apart,"  "  to  sequester,"  to  some  distinc- 
tive use,  just  as  we  might  speak  of  dedicating  or  devot- 
ing a  day  to  amusement,  to  leisure,  to  study.f    And  I 

»  ii.  2,  3. 

t  We  should  perhaps  hardly  speak  of  consecrating  a  day  to  any  but  a 
religious  use.  But  the  French  freely  use  their  corresponding  word  with 
all  tlie  latitude  which  we  give  to  "dedicate,"  and  "devote." 


If^# 


190  EXODUS  XXIV.   I. -XXVII.  21.  [LECT. 

submit  with  confidence,  that,  if  we  were  not  biased  to 
a  peculiar  interpretation  of  this  text,  by  views  precon- 
ceived from  other  sources,  we  should  not  think  of  re- 
garding it,  as  speaking  of  the  appointment,  at  any  time, 
or  in  any  way,  of  a  religious  institution  for  man.  We 
should  understand  it  but  as  declaring,  (agreeably  to 
two  familiar  meanings  of  that  Hebrew  conjugation,  in 
which  the  verbs  are  found,)  either  that  God  (for  him- 
self, and  not  for  man,)  made  the  last  day  of  the  first 
week  (for  the  time  being,  and  not  for  future  time,)  hap- 
py and  sacred,  peculiar,  distinct  from  the  days  which 
had  preceded,  by  resting  upon  it ;  or  that  he  called  that 
day  a  blessed  and  a  holy,  distinguished  day,  on  which 
he  thus  found  repose  from  labor.  —  That  God  enjoyed 
his  own  rest,  is  recorded ;  but  not  that  he  now  estab- 
lished for  men  any  periodical  rest  whatever. 

But  it  will  be  said,  that,  attached  to  the  fourth  com- 
mandment of  the  Decalogue,  we  find  in  Exodus  the 
following  words;  "For  in  six  days  the  Lord  made 
Heaven  and  earth,  the  sea,  and  all  that  in  them  is,  and 
rested  the  seventh  day ;  wherefore  the  Lord  blessed 
the  sabbath-day,  and  hallowed  it ; "  *  and  that  these 
words  are  part  of  God's  own  annunciation  from  Mount 
Sinai. 

I  would  ask,  whether  any  one  can  compare  this  verse 
carefully  with  its  parallel  in  Deuteronomy,  and  then 
be  confident  in  the  opinion  that  it  did  make  an  original 
part  of  the  Decalogue.  In  Deuteronomy  we  find  no  such 
words,  but  instead  of  them  the  following,  which  accord 
entirely  with  the  view  of  the  institution  first  given 
above  ;  "  And  remember  that  thou  wert  a  servant  in  the 
land  of  Egypt,  and  that  the  Lord  thy  God  brought  thee 
out  thence  with  a  mighty  hand,  and  by  a  stretched-out 

•   XX.  11. 


IX.]  EXODUS   XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.   21.  191 

arm ;  therefore  the  Lord  thy  God  commanded  thee  to 
keep  the  sabbath-day."  * 

Will  it  be  said,  that  one  of  these  texts  cannot  be 
used  to  invalidate  the  other  ;  inasmuch  as  the  rea- 
son given  in  Exodus,  and  that  in  Deuteronomy,  were 
both  good,  and  not  mutually  inconsistent,  reasons  for 
the  institution  ;  that  they  were  both  accordingly  an- 
nounced on  Sinai,  and  that  in  Exodus  the  mention  of 
only  one  was  preferred,  in  Deuteronomy  only  of  the 
other?  I  apprehend,  that,  under  the  circumstances, 
this  view  is  altogether  untenable.  What  the  writer  of 
the  Pentateuch  is  doing  in  both  these  instances,  is  not 
prescribing  an  institution,  and  assigning  reasons  for  it. 
In  that  case  he  might,  no  doubt,  with  perfect  propriety, 
select,  from  among  good  reasons,  one  to  be  urged  at 
one  time,  and  another  at  another  time.  But  what  he 
has  undertaken  to  do,  is  to  relate  to  us  a  fact ;  to  tell  us 
what  God  declared,  by  a  supernatural  voice,  at  a  certain 
place  and  time ;  and  these  too,  I  may  add,  a  place  and 
time  when  every  word  was  to  be  chosen,  to  make  the 
most  effectual  impression.  Under  these  circumstances, 
can  it  be  maintained,  that  Moses,  designing  to  act  the 
part  of  a  veracious  narrator,  in  acquainting  us  with  spe- 
cific words  which  God  spake,  could  give  important  words 
in  one  place,  then  omit  them  in  another,  where  he  is  re- 
lating the  same  occurrence,  and  give  us  other  important 
words,  significant  of  a  quite  different  cause  of  a  material 
provision  of  his  Law,  in  their  stead  ? 

I  have  said,  that  Moses  undertakes,  in  these  two 
texts,  if  he  wrote  both,  to  apprize  us  of  words  which 
God  spake  in  the  people's  hearing ;  and  yet  they  differ 
from  each  other.  But  we  are  told  still  more  respecting 
the  specific  character  of  the  words  in  question.  God 
"  wrote  them,"  it  is  said,  (that  is,  wrote  the  words  recited 

•  V.  15. 


192  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.  21.  [LECT. 

in  the  context,)  "  in  two  tables  of  stone."  *  If  he  wrote 
the  precise  words  recorded  in  Deuteronomy  as  the 
Decalogue,  —  those  words,  and  no  other,  (and  under 
the  ch'cumstances,  it  seems  unavoidable  to  interpret 
with  all  this  precision,)  —  then  the  Decalogue  did  not 
contain  the  words  attached  in  Exodus  to  the  fourth 
commandment,  in  which  that  precept  is  said  to  be 
founded  on  the  event  of  God's  creation  of  the  world. 
And,  as  if  to  preclude  all  doubt  upon  the  point,  it  is 
even  declared,  in  the  passage  last  quoted,  that  no  other 
words  were  used,  than  the  words  which  it  specifies. 
"These  words  the  Lord  spake,  —  and  he  added  no 
more  ;  and  h6  wrote  them  in  two  tables  of  stone." 

If  then,  under  the  circumstances,  the  essential  char- 
acter of  an  exact  narrative  precludes  the  supposition  of 
both  these  passages  having  been  wTitten  by  Moses, 
which  is  to  be  regarded  as  having  proceeded  from  his 
hand  ?  Certainly  no  reasons  appear  why  the  authen- 
ticity of  that  in  Exodus  should  be  asserted  to  the  preju- 
dice of  the  other ;  and,  if  the  question  had  to  be  left 
altogether  in  suspense,  I  apprehend  that  the  remarks 
which  have  been  made  would  show  it  to  be  altogether 
unsafe  to  argue,  from  the  passage  in  Exodus,  that  the 
sabbatical  institution  was  contemporaneous  with  the 
creation  of  the  world.  But  further ;  in  comparing  the 
claims  of  the  two  passages  to  be  considered  authentic, 
one  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other,  we  cannot  lose  sight 
of  the  fact,  that  the  passage  in  Deuteronomy  presents  the 
same  view  of  the  Sabbath  with  that  exhibited  so  fully 
in  the  texts  quoted  above ;  a  circumstance  which  affords 
strong  presumption  of  its  superior  authority. 

These  views,  I  think,  dispose  one  strongly  to  the 
conclusion,  that  the  verse  of  Exodus  in  question  was 

•  Deut  V.  22. 


IX.]  EXODUS  XXIV.   1— XXVII.  21.  193 

not  written  by  Moses,  but  by  some  later  hand.*  Noth- 
ing could  be  more  natural,  than  for  some  possessor  of 
his  writings,  struck  by  an  apparent  coincidence  between 
the  command  to  keep  the  Jewish  Sabbath,  as  inserted 
in  the  Decalogue,  and  God's  reposing  on  the  seventh 
day  as  related  at  the  beginning  of  Genesis,  to  have  re- 
corded his  remark  as  a  gloss  in  the  margin  of  his  book, 
whence,  as  is  known  to  have  been  the  case  with  some 
of  the  most  important  interpolations  of  the  Bible,  it  sub- 
sequently found  its  way  into  the  body  of  the  page. 
And  I  will  not  disguise  my  opinion,  that  the  history  of 
the  text  in  Deuteronomy  was  probably  the  same,  though 
it  presents  what  I  believe  to  be  the  true  view  of  the 
Sabbath.  I  have  argued  that  both  texts  could  not  be 
genuine.  I  think  it  most  likely  that,  neither  is  so  ;  and 
my  chief  reason  for  this  persuasion  is,  that,  supposing 
the  genuineness  of  either,  it  presents  a  fragment,  differ- 
ing, in  its  tone  and  structure,  from  all  the  rest  of  the 
Decalogue,  since  the  Decalogue,  in  every  other  case, 
studying  the  utmost  brevity,  deals  only  in  laws  and  then* 
sanctions,  without  exhibiting  the  reasons  on  which  they 
were  founded  ;  a  topic  which  seems  foreign  to  its 
purpose. 

And  the  same  view,  I  think,  is  to  be  taken,  perhaps 
with  even  greater  confidence,  of  the  only  other  impor- 
tant text  bearing  upon  this  point.  It  occurs  a  few  chap- 
ters further  on,  at  the  close  of  the  directions  respecting 
the  tabernacle.f    I  will  not  say  that  this  text  is  rendered 

*  If  written  by  Moses,  it  would  remain  to  be  argued,  that  it  was  not 
recorded  by  him  as  part  of  the  divinely  uttered  Decalogue,  (which  Deut 
V.  15,  compared  with  v.  22,  forbids  us  to  suppose,)  but  was  inserted  paren- 
thetically as  an  argumentum  ad  hoviinem,  for  such  as  received,  as  literal 
fact,  the  narrative  which  he  has  preserved  in  Gen.  ii.  2,  3.  But  I  take  no 
ground  respecting  the  reasonableness  of  such  an  interpretation,  (liable, 
without  doubt,  to  objection,  at  first  view,)  so  strongfly  am  I  persuaded  of 
the  spuriousness  of  the  passage. 

t  Ex.  xxxl  17. 

VOL.  I.  25 


194  EXODUS   XXIV.   1.  — XXVII.  21.  [LECT. 

suspicious  by  the  abrupt  change  of  persons,  which  it 
exhibits,  indicating  the  second  clause  to  be  but  a  gloss, 
though  certainly  its  structure  is  strikingly  consistent 
with  that  view.  But,  if  I  mistake  not,  the  second  clause, 
which  is  all  that  concerns  us  in  this  inquiry,  is  a  palpa- 
ble contradiction  to  the  first,  such  as  strongly  to  dis- 
credit the  supposition  that  Moses  was  its  writer.  "  The 
children  of  Israel,"  it  is  said,  "shall  keep  the  Sabbath, 
to  observe  the  Sabbath  throughout  their  generations,  for 
a  perpetual  covenant ;  it  is  a  sign  between  me  and  the 
children  of  Israel  for  ever."  And  why  were  the  chil- 
dren of  Israel  to  observe  this  sign,  which  was  a  token 
of  their  covenant  with  God  ?  "  For,"  the  text  goes  on, 
"  in  six  days  the  Lord  made  heaven  and  earth,  and  on 
the  seventh  day  he  rested,  and  was  refreshed."  *  That 
is,  for  a  sign  between  me  and  themselves,  they  are  to 
keep  a  day,  in  which  all  the  world,  as  much  as  them- 
selves, has  an  interest.  —  I  can  scarcely  entertain  a  doubt, 
that  the  last  clause  of  the  verse  in  question,  was,  in 
the  first  instance,  a  note  upon  the  passage,  to  which  we 
now  find  it  attached,  suggested  by  the  reading  of  the 
related  passage  in  the  second  chapter  of  Genesis. 

I  have  thus  submitted  what  seems  to  me  good  reason 
for  believing  that  neither  of  the  two  texts,  quoted  from 
the  Law  to  prove  the  ante-Mosaic  origin  of  the  sabbati- 
cal institution,  originally  made  part  of  that  document, 
and  for  adhering  accordingly  to  the  conclusion,  that  the 
Jewish  Sabbath  was  simply  a  Jewish  festival.  The 
course  which  I  take  might  be  more  questionable,  were 
it  not  precisely  the  same,  which  reasons  of  the  case,  — 
scarcely,  I  think,  more  urgent  than  those  which  have 
application  here,  —  compel  us  to  take  with  respect  to 
several  texts,  for  which  the  mere  external  evidence  is 
as  complete,  as  it  is  for  any  part  of  the  Pentateuch, 
but   which,   notwithstanding,  no  one  can  deny  to  be 

•  tt^eiU  n3;j> ;  "rested  and  took  breathJ" 


IX.]  EXODUS  XXIV.   1.- XXVII.  ii\.  195 

spurious,  provided  he  is  of  opinion  that  Moses  wrote 
the  book  which  contains  them.*  There  is  no  other 
alternative.  We  must  either  refer  the  whole  Penta- 
teuch to  a  later  age,  or  we  must  allow,  that,  after  Moses 
had  composed  that  volume,  it  shared  in  some  degree, 
the  lot  of  other  books,  and  received  occasional  interpo- 
lations, originating  often  in  marginal  comments,  which 
later  copyists,  supposing  them  to  have  been  first  acci- 
dentally omitted  in  the  rhanuscript,  and  then  inserted  in 
this  manner,  ended  by  incorporating  into  the  page. 
Believing  that  we  have  sufficient  proof  of  Moses'  hav- 
ing written  the  books,  we  accordingly  adopt  that  theory, 
along  with  its  necessary  incident  of  the  spuriousness 
of  certain  parts  ;  and  this  we  do  the  more  readily, 
because  often  a  little  observation  shows  us,  that  these 
parts  are  of  a  parenthetical  character,  not  breaking,  by 
their  removal,  the  continuity  of  the  sense,  and  so  pre- 
senting precisely  the  appearance  which  glosses  of  foreign 
origin  would  naturally  wear. 

The  correspondence,  then,  between  the  two  cases  is 
this  ;  and  it  seems  to  me  fully  to  justify  the  adoption  of 
the  same  course  in  the  one  instance,  which  is  inevitably 
adopted  in  the  other  by  friends  to  the  theory  of  the 
Mosaic  origin  of  the  Pentateuch.  The  genuineness  of 
a  considerable  number  of  texts,  the  external  evidence 
for  which  has  no  defect,  is  denied  by  this  latter  class  of 
critics,  because,  1.  From  their  structure,  they  may  well 
have  been  parenthetical  glosses ;  2.  Their  genuineness 
cannot  be  maintained  by  any  one,  who  allows  force  to 
reasons  which  seem  to  prove  the  general  authenticity 
of  the  writings.  —  I  question  the  genuineness  of  two 

*  E.  g.  Gen.  xiii.  18 ;  Gen.  xiv.  14.  (compare  Judges  xviii.  29.) ;  xxiii. 
2.  (compare  Josh.  xiv.  15.);  Gen.  xxxvi.  31-43  (see  Kennicott's  "Re- 
marks on  Select  Passages  of  the  Old  Testament,"  p.  35;  compare 
1  Chron.  i.  43-54.);  Ex.  xxx.  13;  Deut  iii.  11,  14;  xxxiv. 


196  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.  21.  [LECT. 

Other  texts,  on  the  grounds,  that,  1 .  From  then*  structure, 
they  may  well  have  been  parenthetical  glosses ;  2.  We 
cannot  maintain  their  genuineness,  and  yet  defend  what 
otherwise  appears  a  sound  and  necessary  interpretation 
of  other  texts  relating  to  the  subject,  and  reject  what 
otherwise  seems  an  altogether  indefensible  theory  ;  while, 
further,  the  first  of  the  texts  in  question  breaks  the  unity 
of  plan  in  the  Decalogue,  and  the  second  contains  matter 
ill  suiting  the  connexion.  I  have  assumed  above,  that 
the  text  in  Genesis,  often  referred  to,  is  a  genuine  part 
of  Moses'  composition,  and  argued  merely,  that,  what- 
ever else  it  means,  it  says  nothing  of  any  sabbatical 
institution.  But,  whether  genuine  or  not,  it  was  ex- 
tremely likely,  when  read  subsequently  to  its  insertion, 
to  give  birth  to  such  glosses,  as  I  believe  the  two  other 
texts  to  have  originally  been. 

But  it  will  be  said,  that  the  Sabbath  must  have  been 
instituted  previously  to  the  time,  when  the  people  are 
related  to  have  gathered  a  double  quantity  of  manna  on 
the  sixth  day  of  the  week.*  Without  allowing  that 
the  interpretation  which  leads  to  this  inference  is  cer- 
tainly correct,  I  yet  thmk  it  extremely  plausible.  But 
an  institution  of  the  Sabbath,  prior  to  this  date,  is  far 
from  implying  an  institution  of  it  contemporaneous  with 
the  creation.  The  supposed  earlier  time,  when  a  com- 
mand to  observe  a  sabbatical  rest  was  given,  may  have 
been  a  near  time,  as  probably  as  a  remote  one.  And 
particularly,  as  was  suggested  on  a  former  occasion,  it 
is  likely  that  we  ought  to  refer  it  to  the  period  of  the 
halt  at  Marah.t 

•'  Ex.  xvi.  22,  23 ;  compare  xvi.  5. 

f  See  p.  152.  —  I  have  not  undertaken  to  present  all  the  considerations, 
which  go  to  show  the  character  of  the  Jewish  Sabbath,  as  contemporane- 
ous with  the  other  positive  regulations  of  the  Law,  and  destined  like  them 
to  be  temporary.  Every  careful  reader  of  Genesis  must  have  been  struck 
with  the  fact,  that  no  hint  of  any  such  observance  occurs  in  its  accounts 


IX.]  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.  21.  197 

I  have  referred  only  to  the  design  of  the  Sabbath  as 
a  frequent  periodical  commemoration  of  an  event,  which, 
as  often  as  it  was  remembered,  called  powerfully  upon 
the  Jewish  people  for  gratitude  and  submission  to  their 
Divine  Benefactor.  I  might  proceed  to  speak  of  the 
social,  moral,  and  economical  uses  of  an  institution 
which  provided  a  salutary  refreshment  for  mind  and 
body,  by  securing  to  every  citizen  a  weekly  respite 
from  his  toils,  and  admitted  even  the  brute  creation  to 
a  share  in  the  indulgence.  But  these  make  a  subject 
of  frequent  remark ;  and  I  pass  at  once  to  some  obser- 
vations on  the  great  Annual  Festivals. 

These  were  three  in  number ;  viz.  the  Passover,  the 
Pentecost,  and  the  Tabernacles.*    Two  of  them  at  least, 

of  tlie  adventures  and  journeyings  of  the  patriarchs  ;  and  on  the  other 
hand,  St.  Paul's  language  is  very  explicit,  where  (Col.  ii.  16,  17)  he  places 
the  "  sabbath-days  "  on  the  same  level  with  other  obsolete  .ritual  institu- 
tions. —  It  would  be  out  Qf  place  here  to  speak  of  that  entirely  different 
institution,  the  Christian  Lord's  Day.  While  I  think,  that  it  is  by  a  mere 
error,  and  tliat  a  comparatively  modern,  and  a  very  unhappy  one,  that  the 
latter  institution  has  been  confounded  with  the  Jewi.sh  Sabbath,  I  regard 
it  as  standing  on  perfectly  sufficient  and  solid  grounds  of  its  own.  Rest 
from  labor,  (which  may  be  mere  indolent  repose,)  I  find  to  be  the  essence 
of  the  Jewish  observance  ;  of  the  Christian,  I  understand  rest  from  labor 
to  be  but  an  incident,  though  an  incident  indispensable  to  the  securing  of 
that  quiet  and  retirement,  without  which  the  appropriate  devotional  exer- 
cises and  studies  of  the  day  could  not  be  pursued,  as  they  should  be,  with 
an  undistracted  attention  of  the  mind.  —  In  my  view,  he  who  should  have 
proved  the  perpetual  obligation  of  the  Jewish  Sabbath,  would  have  proved 
simply  that  we  were  bound  to  keep  every  Saturday  as  a  holiday ;  while 
the  Christian  Sunday  would  still  make  its  own  distinct  claim  on  us  to  de- 
vote it  to  higher  uses. 

If  any  reader  thinks  that  I  have  used  undue  freedom  in  questioning 
the  authenticity  of  texts  bearing  upon  this  argument,  I  request  him,  in 
connexion  with  the  views  presented  in  this  Lecture,  to  reconsider  the 
statements  in  the  first  half  of  Lecture  III.  —  It  is  not  the  text  of  the  New 
Testament,  which  I  am  treating;  and  it  is  a  mere  confusion  of  ideas, 
which  causes  any  one  to  suppose,  that  the  readings  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments,  received  by  us  under  such  different  circumstances,  are  to  be 
dealt  witli  alike. 

*  1  speak  only  of  Legal  Festivals.     The  Jews,  in  later  times,  kept 


198  EXODUS  XXIV.   1.- XXVII.  21.  [LECT. 

(for  in  respect  to  the  Pentecost,  the  fact  may  be  doubt- 
ed,) were  commemorations  of  important  events  belong- 
ing to  the  early  history  of  the  separation  of  the  Jews 
to  be  a  peculiar  people  for  God's  service,  and  were 
designed  to  keep  alive  the  memory  of  those  events 
in  the  minds  of  the  people  through  all  time,  and  so  to 
be  to  them  a  perpetually  recurring  excitement  of  grati- 
tude, and  admonition  to  obedience.  I  need  not  say, 
that  the  observance  of  such  annual  commemorations  of 
important  events  in  a  people's  history  has  its  founda- 
tion in  human  nature.  This  is  proved  by  the  practice 
of  most  nations,  even  at' the  present  day;  perhaps' of 
all  nations,  advanced  enough  to  be  able  to  reckon  a 
year,  or  have  any  history  to  preserve.  In  ancient  times, 
when  the  art  of  reading,  and  consequently  the  use  of 
those  historical  documents  which  we  most  value,  were 
far  more  limited  than  now,  the  need  of  such  commemo- 
rations was  still  more  manifest  and  urgent.  And  the 
more  solemn,  imposing,  and  exciting  were  the  appro- 
priate observances  which  attended  their  celebration,  the 
more  fully,  so  far,  would  they  execute  their  office. 

We  have  already  read  of  the  original  institution  of 
the  Passover,  in  connexion  with  the  emancipation  of 
the  Israelites  from  Egypt.*  In  the  Law  delivered  on 
Mount  Sinai,  a  peculiar  additional  direction  is  given 
respecting  it,  in  connexion  with  the  two  other  weekly 

other  annual  commemorations ;  the  Feast  of  Dedication  (John  x.  22)  was 
instituted  by  Judas  the  Maccabee,  for  a  memorial  of  the  cleansing  of  the 
Temple  after  its  desecration  by  Antiochus  Epiphanes,  in  the  second  cen- 
tury before  our  era,  and  was  kept  in  the  month  of  December  with  very 
ceremonious  observance.  The  feast  of  Purim,  (Esther  ix.  26-32,)  insti- 
tuted in  remembrance  of  the  deliverance  of  the  Jews  in  Persia  from  the 
plot  of  Haman,  was  celebrated  yearly  in  the  month  of  February.  There 
also  appear  to  have  been  other  holidays  of  the  kind,  peculiar  to  portions 
of  the  nation,  as  tribes,  cities,  or  single  families.  Instances  of  such  occur 
in  Judges  xxi.  19  ;  1  Samuel  xx.  29. 
*  See  page  137. 


IX.]  EXODUS  XXIV.  I.  — XXVII.  21.  199 

feasts,  then  for  the  first  time  instituted.  "  Three  times 
in  the  year  all  thy  males  shall  appear  before  the  Lord 
God " ;  *  that  is,  in  the  place  of  the  national  worship. 
It  is  probable,  that,  through  the  years  passed  in  the 
wilderness,  this  law  was  intended  to  have  a  rigid  inter- 
pretation ;  as  a  manifest  important  use  of  it  would  be,  to 
keep  the  nation  together  in  one  body,  by  enforcing  a 
periodical  reunion,  and  calling  back  at  regular  intervals 
those  who  might  have  strayed  to  a  distance  from  the 
camp,  in  search  of  pasture  for  their  flocks  and  herds. 
In  subsequent,  and  more  setded  times,  it  would  be  a 
serious  inconvenience  for  all  the  males  of  the  nation  to 
leave  their  families  without  their  protection  and  aid,  and 
then  there  would  be  opportunity  for  the  rigor  of  the 
law  to  be  relaxed ;  nor  is  there,  I  think,  any  thing  in  its 
letter  to  forbid  its  being  construed  with  much  latitude. 
A  man  might  well  be  said  to  have  virtually  executed 
this  duty,  who  appeared  "before  the  Lord"  with  his 
offering,  sent  by  the  hand  of  a  friend,  as  a  suitor  is  said, 
in  our  common  speech,  to  appear  in  a  court  of  justice, 
when  he  is  represented  there  by  his  attorney.  Nor, 
independently  of  this,  do  the  words  "  all  thy  males  " 
appear  to  be  conclusive  to  the  point  of  a  Uteral  univer- 
sality of  the  convocation.  We  speak  somewhat  freely 
of  "all  the  men,"  and  "all  the  people"  coming  together, 
when  we  have  nothing  in  our  mind,  except  a  general 
assembUng  of  them.f  The  terms  of  the  law  appear  to 
be  such  as  to  admit  of  its  being  more  or  less  strictly 
enforced,  as  circumstances  might  require. 

The  two  other  annual  feasts,  prescribed,  in  the  twenty- 
third  chapter  of  Exodus  in  connexion  with  the  Passo- 
over,  are  there  mentioned  in  a  single  verse,  under  the 
names  of  "  the  feast  of  harvest,"  and  "  the  feast  of  in- 

*  Ex.  xxiii.  17.  t  See  Acts  iii.  11. 


200  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.  21.  [LECT. 

gathering."*  The  latter  is  the  same  which  is  com- 
monly called  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  from  the  form 
of  its  observance,  prescribed  at  a  later  period.f  The 
celebration  of  the  former,  best  known  by  the  name  of 
the  Pentecost,  t  began  fifty  days  after  the  Passover,  and 
accordingly  occurred  at  the  end  of  the  month  of  May. 
It  was  a  thanksgiving-feast  for  the  return  of  the  corn- 
harvest,  the  first-fruits  of  which  were  then  presented. 
From  the  fact  that  the  Law  on  Sinai  appears  to  have 
been  given  fifty  days  after  the  first  Passover,^  it  has 
also  been  thought,  that  the  Pentecost  was  intended  for 
a  commemoration  of  that  event ;  and  the  opinion  has 
strong  probability,  though  it  is  not  confirmed  by  any 
express  declaration.  The  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  which 
occurred  at  the  end  of  September,  at  the  close  of  the 
fruitage  and  vintage,  was  observed  in  a  manner  to  keep 
alive  the  memory  of  the  wandering  life,  which  the  peo- 
ple had  led  in  the  wilderness. 

On  the  first  day  of  the  Feast  of  Pentecost,  and  on  the 
first  and  last  of  that  of  Tabernacles,  abstinence  from 
labor  was  interdicted  by  laws  given  at  a  later  period, 
as  it  had  been  m  respect  to  the  first  and  last  days  of 
the  Passover,  at  its  original  institution.  ||  But  it  is  a 
mistake  to  suppose  that  the  whole  of  a  festival  week  was 
necessarily  withdrawn  by  the  whole  nation  from  the 
processes  of  industry.  This  might  well  be  practically 
the  case  to  a  considerable  extent,  as  most  of  the  at- 
tendants at  the  feasts  were  absent,  for  that  purpose, 
from  their  homes ;  but  the  prohibition  of  labor  on  the 
first  and  last  days  implies  an  allowance  of  it  on  the 
others.    The  festivals,  as  we  are  hereafter  to  see  more 

•  Ex.  xxiU.  la  t  Lev.  xxiii.  39 -4a 

\  Ihtm»4*rn,  from  -rtirmutrH,  fijtitlh.  §  Compare  Ex.  xix.  1,  16. 

n  Ex.  xii.  16  ;  Lev.  xxiii.  21,  35,  36,  39.    The  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  as 
appears  from  these  two  last  texts,  was  kept  through  eight  days. 


IX.]  EXODUS   XXIV.   1.  — XXVII.  21.  2M 

at  large,  were  occasions  of  patriotic  festivity,  and  of 
individual  hospitality  and  benevolence.'  The  Jew,  at  the 
same  tune  that  by  his  offerings  at  the  sanctuary  he  was 
reminded  of  the  Divine  interpositions  in  behalf  of  his 
nation,  and  admonished  of  the  returns  of  gratitude  and 
duty  which  it  owed,  was  also  recalled  to  a  sense  of  the 
relation  which  he  bore  to  his  brethren  of  every  tribe  of 
the  descendants  of  Jacob ;  while  by  the  bounty,  which, 
according  as  his  means  might  be,  the  Law  called  on 
him  to  exercise,  or  authorized  him  to  expect,  he  was 
made  to  remember  the  equal  place  which  he  held  with 
others,  in  social  obligations  and  privileges,  —  in  the  cog- 
nizance and  the  care  of  the  united  commonwealth. 
The  infallible  efficacy  of  such  an  institution  to  nourish 
a  national  spirit  is  manifest.  And  its  actual  operation 
of  this  kind  strikingly  appears  ,in  the  course,  which  was 
taken  by  Jeroboam  after  the  revolt  of  the  ten  northern 
tribes.  "  *  If  this  people  go  up,'  "  said  he,  "  '  to  do 
sacrifice>  in  the  house  of  the  Lord,  at  Jerusalem,  then 
shall  the  heart  of  this  people  turn  again  unto  their  lord, 
even  unto  Rehoboam,  king  of  Judah.'  Whereupon  the 
king  took  counsel,  and  made  two  calves  of  gold,  and 
said  unto  them  '  It  is  too  much  for  you  to  go  up  to  Jeru- 
salem ;  behold  thy  gods,  O  Israel,  which  brought  thee 
out  of  the  land  of  Egypt ; '  and  he  set  the  one  in  Bethel, 

and  the  other  put  he  in  Dan And  Jeroboam 

ordained  a  feast  in  the  eighth  month,  on  the  fifteenth 
day  of  the  month,  like  unto  the  feast  that  is  in  Judah."  * 

*  1  Kings  xii.  27-32.  —  Josephus  urges  this  effect  of  intercourse  at 
the  feasts  to  cement  the  political  union,  in  his  paraphrase  of  Moses'  last 
discourse  to  the  people.  Antiq.  Jud.,  lib.  4,  cap.  8,  §  7.  —  While  the  feasts 
would  naturally  be  used  for  meetings  of  friends,  inhabiting  distant  parts  of 
the  country,  they  would  also  become  convenient  occasions  for  the  trans- 
actions of  internal  commerce,  like  the  annual  fairs  in  many  cities  of  Eu- 
rope. And  Micliaelis  ("Commentaries  on  the  Laws  of  Moses,"  B.  4,  chap. 
3,  part  5)  urges  their  usefulness  in  respect  \o  corrections  of  the  calendar. 

VOL.  I.  26 


202  fiXODus  XXIV.  1.  — xxvii.  21.  [LECT. 

No  person  could  partake  of  the  Passover,  till  he  had 
first  been  a  subject  of  the  Jewish  rite  of  Circumcision. 
With  the  exception  of  the  mention  of  this  rite  in  the 
accouht  of  the  return  of  Moses  from  Midiah  to  Egypt, 
the  first  reference  to  it  in  the  book  of  Exodus  is  in 
connexion  with  the  institution  of  the  Passover.  The 
subjects  of  it  were  all  the  males  of  the  nation ;  viz. 
1.  native  Jews;  2.  their  slaves;  3.  foreigners,  who  be- 
came proselytes  to  Judaism.*  Without  it  no  one  could 
be,  either  by  birth  or  adoption,  a  Jewish  citizen. 

The  6rigin  of  this  practice  among'  the  Israelites  was 
much  more  ancient  than  the  time  of  Moses.  In  the 
book  of  Genesis  we  read  that  .Abraham  had  been  com- 
manded to  observe  it,  for  himself  and  his  family,  as  a 
token  of  their  allegiance  to  Jehovah,  from  an  early 
period  of  his  establishment  in  Canaan.f  It  has  been 
made  a  question,  whether  it  was  adopted  by  the  He- 
brews from  other  nations,  or  by  other  nations  from  them, 
or  whether,  as  existing  among  the  Hebrews  and  else- 
where, it  had  in  each  case  an  independent  origin.  It 
is  a  question  not  easy  of  solution,  and  a  satisfactory 
examination  of  it  would  require  more  space  than  its 
importance  would  justify.  The  view,  which  on  the 
whole  I  think  most  probable,  is  as  follows.  At  Abra- 
'^  ham's  visit  to  Egypt,  soon, after  his  first  setdement  in 
Canaan,!  he  found  the  rite  already  in  use  among  the 
Egypdan  priests  ;  for,  that  it  was  practised  among  that 
order  from  an  early  antiquity,  there  appears  to  be  sufii- 

m : 

•  fix.  xii.  44, 48. 

f  Gen.  xvii.  9- 14,  23  -  27.  —  It  was  transmitted  in  each  line  of  Abra- 
ham's descendants.  Jerome,  (on  Jer.  ix.  24,  25,  Vol.  5,  p.  287,)  writing 
in  the  second  century  before  Mohammed,  says ;  "  the  Saracens,  who  inhabit 
the  desert,  are  circumcised."  This  is  the  origin  of  the  practice  among 
the  Mussulmans,  being  adopted  from  the  Ishmaelites,  the  nation  of  tlicir 
prophet    It  is  not  prescribed  in  the  Koran. 

}  Gen.  xii.  10-20. 


IX.]  EXODUS  XXIV.  1— XXVII.  21.  203 

cient  reason  to  believe.  As  a  characteristic  usage  of  a 
dignified  and  famous  priesthood,  an  idea  of  sanctity 
naturally  became  attached  to  it  in  his  mind ;  and  ac- 
cordingly, when  afterwards  *  he  was  taught  to  con- 
sider himself  and  his  race  as  sacred  to  Jehovah,  or  as 
it  is  elsewhere  expressed,  "  a  f^ingdom  of  priests,  and 
an  holy  nation,"  f  the  observance  of  this  rite  was  pre- 
scribed, to  be  a  memento  to  them,  through  all  time, 
of  the  sacredness  of  the  relation  to  which  they  had 
been  received.! 

*  Gen.  xvii.  1  et  seq.  f.  Ex.  xix.  6. 

X  That  circumcision  was  not  newly  introduced  at.  the  time  spoken  of 
in  Gen.  xvii., Michaelis  ("Commentaries"  &c.,  B.  4,  chap.  8,  part  1^  argues, 
from  the  fact  tliat  more  than  tliree  hundred  (compare  Gen.  xiv.  14  ;  xvii. 
23)  were  circumcised  in  one  day,  showing  tliat  the  method  of  administra- 
tion was  before  well  known.  —  The  questions  of  the  origin  and  uses  of 
circumcision  are  largely  discussed  by  Spencer,  in  his  treatise  "De  Legi- 
bus  Hebrtporum  Ritualibus,"  lib.  1,  cap.  4,  §  2,  4,  6.  Herodotus  says,  (lib. 
2,  §  36,)  "The  Egyptians  practise  circumcision";  and,  more  particularly 
(§  104),  "Alone  of  all  men,  the  Golcbians,  Egyptians,  and  Ethiopians 
originally  used  this  rite ;  but  the  Phoenicians  and  Syrians  of  Palestine 

say  thai  they  learned  it  from  the  Egyptians As  to  the  Egyptians  and 

Ethiopians,  I  cannot  say  which  learned  it  of  the  other ;  for  it  appears  to  be 
an  ancient  usage."  Diodorus  Siculus  (lib.  1,  §  28),  and  Julian  the  Apos- 
tate (Cyril,  cont  Julian.,  p.  354,  Paris  edit),  speak  of  the  Jews  having  de- 
rived it  from  Egypt ;  and  Celsus  (as  quoted  by  Origen,  I.  609)  says,  that 
the  Egyptians  and  Colcliians  observed  the  usage  earlier  tlian  that  nation. 

The  second  of  the  passages  of  Herodotus,  above  refen^  to,  is  un- 
doubtedly the  best  authority  in  the  case.  Though  in  botli  of  them  he 
speaks  in  general  terras  of  the  existence  of  the  usage  among  tlie  Egyp- 
tians, it  appears  that  he  intended  to  represent  it  as  peculiarly  a  custom 
of  the  priests,  of  whose  practices  he  is  speaking  at  large  in  the  section 
first  above  quoted,  and  in  that  wliich  follows ;  and  Origen,  more  explicitly, 
a  native  Egyptian  himself,  writes  on  Romans  ii.  13 ;  "  Sacerdos  apud  eoa 
[iEgyptios],  aruspex,  aut  qnorumlibet  sacrorum  minister,  vel,  ut  illi  ap- 
pellant, propheta  omnis,  circumcisus  est"  (Benedictine  edition.  Vol.  IV. 
p.  495.)  A  curious  passage  to  the  same  effect  is  quoted  from  HoripoUo. 
See  Spencer,  Vol.  I.  p.  31. 

The  representation,  which  I  have  given  above  of  the  purport  of  the  rite 
of  circumcision,  exhibits  an  important  analogy  between  it  and  our  Chris- 
tian rite  of  baptism.  It  was  the  individual's  consecration  to  God,  through 
an  emblematic  observance,  having  reference  to  the  ideas  of  the  time. 
Various  subsidiary  uses  of  it  have  been  pointed  out,  both  by  modem  com- 


204  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.  21.  [LECT. 

I  return  to  the  consideration  of  the  first  directions 
given  to  Moses,  after  the  delivery  of  the  Law.  They 
respected  the  provision  of  a  place  of  national  worship. 

The  Tabernacle,  as  the  present  circumstances  of  the 
people  required  that  it  should  be,  was  a  movable  struc- 
ture. It  was  nothing  else  than  a  pavilion,  of  costly- 
materials,  and  elaborate  workmanship,  so  contrived  as 
to  be  set  up  in  the  midst  of  the  camp  of  the  Israelites, 
when  they  were  at  rest,  and  to  be  struck  like  any  other 
tent,  and  conveyed  from  place  to  place,  according  as 
their  destination  might  be. 

The  Tabernacle  was  ordered  to  be  erected  thirty 
cubits  long,  ten  broad,  and  ten  high.  That  is,  according 
to  the  most  approved  computation,  its  length  was  about 
fifty-four  feet,  and  its  width  and  height  each  eighteen. 
The  sides  were  composed  each  of  twenty,  and  the 
west  end  of  eight    upright  planks   of  shittim-wopd,* 

mentators,  and  others,  as  ancient  as  Philo,  who  wrote  a  separate  disserta- 
tion on  the  subject.  Without  going  farther  into  the  inquiry,  I  collect  the 
following  list  from  different  parts  of  Spencer's  treatise.  1.  "  Signum 
erat  distinctivum  in  eum  finem  ordinatum,  ut  sanctus  populus  k  reliquis 
mundi  gentibus  discerneretur " ;  2.  "  Signum  erat  memorativum,  quo 
fcedus  cum  Abrahamo  initum,  in  frequentem  memoriam  revocari  posset"; 
3.  "  Signum  erat  figurativum  utpote  quse  rei  spiritualis  figuram  et  iraagi- 
nem  pweferebat ;  attUtm  pixau  <r<t^»is  ";  4.  Ritu  illo  in  cultum  Phalli  ^gyp- 
tiaci  cbntemptus  injiciebatur ;  5.  Ritu  Ulo  morbo  occurrebatur,  cui  partes 
illiE,  in  Oriente  prsesertim,  obnoxis  credebantur ;  6.  Ritu  illo  Judseorum 
natio  magis  habilis  et  idonea  ad  sobolem  procreandam  reddebatur.  The 
last  two  reasons  are  urged  by  Philo,  (Vol.  II.  p.  211,  Bowyer's  edition.) 
Michaelis   (ubi  supra)  proposes  others,  similar. 

•  Our  translators  have  but  given  here  the  Hebrew  word.  The  authors 
of  the  Septuagint  version  did  not  know  what  the  tree  so  denoted  was,  and 
have  rendered  \uXm  in«ray  incorrwptihlt  wood.  Jerome  (in  Joel  iii.  ad 
calc.  Vol.  VI.  p.  70)  says,  that  the  shittim-wood  "  resembles  white  thorn 
in  its  color  and  leaves,  but  not  in  its  size ;  for  the  tree  is  so  large,  that  it 
affords  very  long  planks.  The  wood  is  hard,  tough,  smooth,  and  extremely 
beautiful ;  so  that  the  rich  and  curious  make  screws  of  it  for  their  presses. 
It  does  not  grow  in  cultivated  places,  nor  in  any  other  part  of  the  Roman 
empire,  but  only  in  the  deserts  of  Arabia,"  It  is  thought  to  be  the  same 
with  the  Black  Acacia  of  that  regiort. 


IX. J  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — xxvii.  ai.  205 

overlaid  with  gold,  fastened  together  by  staves  passed 
horizontally  through  rings  of  the  same  metal,  and  stand- 
ing upon  a  foundation  of  a  hundred  pedestals  of  solid 
silver,  each  of  a  talent's  weight,  or  about  a  hundred 
pounds.  The  entrance,  at  the  end  which  was  always 
placed  towards  the  east,  was  composed  of  a  richly 
embroidered  curtain,  festooned  over  five  columns  over- 
laid with  gold.* 

Upon  this  frame  were  hung  four  coverings.  The 
lowest,  or  that  which  was  seen  within,  was  composed  of 
fine  linen,  embroidered  with  blue,  purple,  and  scarlet, 
the  breadths  of  the  cloth  being  fastened  together  with 
loops  of  blue,  and  clasps  of  gold.  Next  above,  was  a 
hanging  of  a  sort  of  mohair,  its  breadths  also  joined  with 
brazen  clasps.  Over  this  was  thrown  a  curtain  of 
leather  of  rams'  skins,  died  of  a  scarlet  color,  and  over 
all,  to  exclude  the  weather,  a  more  substantial  casing 
made  of  badgers'  [or  seals']  skins.f  We  may  presume 
that  there  was  some  temporary  frame  with  a  slanting 
roof,  used  as  occasion  might  require,  to  protect  the 
Tabernacle  still  further  from  dew  and  rain. 

In  the  interior  arrangement  and  furniture  of  the  edi- 
fice, we  see  distinct  traces  of  the  relation  which  the 
Jews  were  taught  to  regard  God  as  sustaining  towards 
their  community.  The  Tabernacle  was  the  palace  of 
their  king,  as  well  as  the  temple  of  their  Deity.  When 
they  rested,  the  regal  tent  was  pitched  in  the  midst  of 
their  encampment.  While  they  journeyed,  it  accompa- 
nied the  march,  surrounded  by  the  monarch's  selectest 
retinue.  Within,  it  was  divided  into  two  apartments, 
the  one  answering  to  a  sovereign's  presence-chamber, 
the  place  of  his  own  residence  and  retirement,  the  hall 
of  his  throne  ;  the  other,  to  an  ante-room,  with  its  light 
always  burning,  and  its  food  and  incense  always  ready 

*  Ex.  xxvi.  15  -  29,  36,  37 ;  xxxix.  27.  f  xxvi.  1  - 14. 


206  EXODUS  XXIV.   1  — XXVII.  21.  [LECT. 

for  use.  These  rooms  were  divided  from  each  other  by 
a  rich  curtain,*  suspended  at  a  distance  probably  of  two 
thirds  of  the  length  of  the  Tabernacle,  from  the  en- 
trance.! The  two  apartments  were  called  respectively, 
the  "Holy  Place,"  and  the  "Holy  of  Holies." 

The  room  called  the  "Holy  of  Holies,"  or  "Most 
Holy  Place,"  —  a  cube,  measuring  eighteen  feet  each 
way, — the  most  sacred  of  all  earthly  spots,  in  the  mind 
of  a  Jew,  had  no  furnitpre  but  the  Ark,  the  seat  and 
symbol  of  the  Deity's  own  presence.  The  Ark  was  a 
chest  made  of  shittim-wood,  richly  plated  with  gold, 
about  five  feet  long,  three  wide,  and  three  high.t  In  it 
were  deposited  the  tablets  of  stone,  of  which  we  are 
presently  to  read,  giving  it  the  name  of  "the  Ark  of  the 
Covenant,"  and  in  later  times,  "  the  golden  pot  that  had 
manna,  and  Aaron's  rod  that  budded."  §  Its  lid,  of  pure 
gold,  was  what,  in  our  English  version,  on  very  doubtful 
authority,  is  called  the  "mercy-seat,"  the  idea  con- 
veyed in  that  term  being,  that  God  was  mercifully 
pleased  to  sit  upon  it,  as  a  throne,  in  the  midst  of  his 
chosen  Israel.  Upon  it  were  two  cherubim  of  beaten 
gold,  one  at  each  end,  in  a  standing  posture,  turned 
towards  each  other,  with  their  faces  bent  partly  down- 
wards, and  stretching  their  wings  towards  one  another 
so  as  to  meet  over  the  Ark.||  What  the  cherubim 
were,  is  an  unsettled  question,  the  etymology  of  the 
word  being  obscure,  and  no  sufficient  light  being  thrown 

*  Ex.xxvL  31-33. 

t  I  say  "  probably,"  because  such  (as  we  read  in  1  Kings  vi.  2,  20), 
was  the  proportion  of  the  two  rooms  in  the  Temple,  in  which  (though 
twice  as  large  as  the  Tabernacle),  otlier  proportions  of  the  latter  struc- 
ture were  preserved,  and  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that  the  same  was  true 
of  this. 

X  XXV.  10-16.  §  Hebrews  ix.  4. 

II  Ex.  XXV.  17-22.  Probably,  IY^33  meant  sunply  lid,  from  193, 
to  cover.    Our  version  is  from  the  Septuagint  ikafrifit*. 


IX.]  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.  21.  207 

upon  its  meaning  from  the  contexts  in  which  it  ap- 
pears.* 

The  "  Holy  Place,"  the  other  room  of  the  Taberna- 
cle, (of  the  same  dimensions  with  the  "  Holy  of  Holies," 
except  in  its  length,  which,  as  has  been  observed,  was 
probably  twice  as  great,)  contained  three  pieces  of  fur- 
niture. These  were ;  the  Altar  of  Incense ;  the  Gol- 
den Candlestick ;  and  the  Table  of  Shew -Bread.  The 
Altar  was  two  cubits  high,  and  one  cubit  square  at 
its  top,  of  shittim-wood  overlaid  with  gold.  It .  was 
placed  at  the  western  end  of  the  apartment,  directly 
before  the  veil  which  separated  it  from  the  Most  Holy 
Placet  The  Golden  Candlestick  stood  on  the  south 
side.  It  was  made  of  a  talent's  weight  of  beaten  gold, 
with  one  principal  light  and  six  branches,  the  pattern 
of  which  (that  is,  as  it  was  renewed  for  the  second 
Temple,  in  the  sack  of  which  it  was  carried  away  by 
the  Romans)  is  still  preserved,  so  complete  as  to  indi- 
cate the  whole  figure,  on  one  of  the  sides  of  the  arch 
of  Titus  at  Rome.t  On  the  north  side  was  the  Table 
of  Shew-Bread,  two  cubits  long,  one  wide,  and  one 
and  a  half  high.§     On  this,  always  stood,  in  two  piles, 

•  From  the  fact  that  the  figures,  which  Jeroboam  (1  Kings  xii.  28,)  set  up 
in  Bethel  and  Dan,  are  called,  by  the  Jewish  historians,  "  calves,"  an  infer- 
ence, which,  on  other  grounds,  is  not  without  probability,  has  been  drawn, 
that  the  figure  of  tlio  cheilibim  over  the  Ark  was  that  of  oxen.  Jero- 
boam, it  is  to  be  presumed,  would  imitate,  for  his  subjects,  after  the  revolt, 
the  symbols  and  forms  of  the  worship  to  which  they  had  been  accustom- 
ed. If  he  set  up  at  Betliel  and  Dan,  copies  of  the  cherubim,  as  they 
were  understood  to  be  shaped,  and  if  they  had  the  shape  of  oxen,  his 
images  would  be  very  likely  to  receive  from  the  Jewish  writers,  in  con- 
tempt, the  name  of  "  calves,"  quasi,  Jeroboam's  pet  oxen. 

t  Ex.  XXX.  1-6.  J  XXV.  31-39. 

§  D" J3  DnS  ;  "  bread  of  faces,"  or  "  bread  of  presence."  The  English 
translation  has  no  meaning,  nor  is  it  easy  to  fix  on  a  satisfactory  one. 
The  Scptuagiut  calls  the  loaves,  a^vu  Uu^iei ;  the  Vulgate,  "  panes  pro- 
positionis  " ;  that  is,  bread  exposed,  set  out  from  week  to  week,  as  is  di- 
rected to  be  done  in  Lev.  xxiv.  5-9. 


208  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.  21.  [LECT. 

twelve  new  loaves  of  fine  flour,  with  dishes,  spoons, 
and  bowls,  as  if  for  a  feast.*  The  loaves  were  renewed 
every  Sabbath,  and  the  stale  loaves,  at  the  same  time, 
were  devoured  in  the  sanctuary  by  the  priests. 

Such  was  the  interior  structure  and  fui-niture  of  the 
place  of  Jewish  worship.  The  Tabernacle  stood,  when 
pitched,  in  the  midst  of  a  rectangular  enclosure,  a  hun- 
dred cubits  long  by  fifty  wide,  (that  is,  about  a  hundred 
and  eighty  feet  by  ninety,)  made  for  it  by  a  hanging  of 
"  fine  twined  linen,"  supported  by  columns,  five  cubits 
high  and  surmounted  by  silver  capitals,  which  stood 
upon  brazen  bases,  at  distances  of  five  cubits  fi'om  one 
another.!  The  entrance  to  the  court,  twenty  cubits 
wide,t  was  at  the  eastern  end,  corresponding  to  the 
entrance  into  the  Tabernacle. 

Besides  the  Tabernacle,  two  other  structures  stood 
within  this  court ;  viz.  next  the  Tabernacle,  towards 
the  east,  the  Brazen  Laver,  perhaps  formed  of  that 
metal,  that  the  priests  might  use  it  for  a  mirror,  to  per- 
form their  ablutions  the  more  thoroughly;^  and  the 
Altar  of  Burnt-Offering,  between  the  Laver  and  the 
entrance  to  the  court.  This  was  hollow,  made  of 
planks  of  shittim-wood,  plated  with  brass.  It  was  five 
cubits,  or  nine  feet  square,  at  top,  and  three  cubits  high. 
It  was  furnished  with  four  brazen  rings,  into  which 
staves  were  fitted  for  its  conveyance,  and  at  each  cor- 
ner was  what  is  called  a  "horn,"  for  the  purpose  of  con- 
fining victims.  II 

*  Ex.  XXV.  23-30.  t  xxvii.  9-18.  t  xxvii.  16. 

§  XXX.  18-21 ;  xxxviii.  8.  —  Our  translation  in  xxxviii,  8,  though  counte- 
nanced by  ancient  versions,  has  no  good  authority.  It  would  be  better 
rendered,  "  He  made  a  brazen  laver,  with  a  brazen  cover,  ornamented  with 
beautiful  figures,  such  as  adorned  the  gate  of  the  Tabernacle  of  the 
congregation."  See  Dathe,  ad  loc.  Respecting  the  dimensions  of  the 
Laver,  we  are  not  informed. 

II  xxviL  1-8;  compare  Ps.  cxviii.  27. — The  common  opinion  is,  that 
the  fire  on  this  altar  was  never  sufiered  to  go  out ;  (see  Lev.  vi.  13 ;)  and 


Vii. 


IX.]  EXODUS  XXIV.  1.  — XXVII.  21.  209 

The  cost  of  these  structures  was  furnished  from  two 
sources;  1.  from  what  we  should  call  a  poll-tax  of  a 
half-shekel  for  each  male  citizen  of  full  age,*  an  exac- 
tion which,  small  in  itself,  was  probably  mtended  to 
operate  on  that  well-known  principle  of  human  nature, 
which  causes  a  man  to  feel  an  interest  in  that  which 
he  has  given  his  money  to  procure ;  2.  from  the  volun- 
tary contributions  of  the  richer  sort.f  The  gold  and 
silver,  employed  upon  the  structure,  independently  of 
the  brass,  wood,  skins,  linen,  and  labor,  have  been  esti- 
mated at  the  value  of  nearly  a  million  of  doUars.t 

the  ingenuity  of  the  commentators  has  been  tasked  to  show  how  it  could 
be  kept  up  while  the  host  was  on  the  march.  (Compare  Numb.  iv.  13, 
14.)  I  think  it  probable,  that  Lev.  vi.  13,  refers  to  the  perpetual  daily 
succession  of  morning  and  evening  Burnt  Offerings.  By  the  time  one 
was  consumed,  another  was  to  follow.  Such  is  the  connexion.  See  verses 
9,  12.    Compare  I  7.    See  also  Ex.  xxix.  38,  39,  42. 

*  Ex.  XXX.  13-16.    A  shekel  was  about  half  a  dollar. 

t  XXXV.  20-29.  —  In  this  description  of  the  Tabernacle  and  its  furni- 
ture, I  have,  for  perspicuity's  sake,  adopted  a  different  order  from  that  of 
the  record  of  the  directions  received  by  Moses.  The  latter  will  be  found 
to  be  as  follows;  the  Ark,  Ex.  xxv.  10-22;  the  Table  of  Shew-Bread, 
XXV.  23-30;  the  Candlestick,  xxv.  31  -  40 ;  the  Tent,  xxvi ;  the  Altar  of 
Burnt-Offerings  and  Court,  xxvii.  The  Altar  of  Incense  and  Brazen  La- 
ver  were  subjects  of  subsequent  directions,  viz.  in  xxx.  1-10,  and  xxx.  17- 
21.  They  belong  to  the  class  of  improvements  on  the  original  plan, 
of  which  so  much  has  been  said. 

\  See  Jennings's  "  Jewish  Antiquities,"  Vol.  II.  p.  7.  The  estimate, 
made  agreeably  to  Bishop  Cumberland's  scheme,  in  his  "  Essay  towards 
the  Recovery  of  the  Jewish  Measures  and  Weights,"  is  founded  on  Ex. 
xxxviii.  24,  25. 


VOL.  I.  27 


210  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.  [LECT. 


LECTURE    X. 

EXODUS   XXVIII.   1..— XL.   38. 

Institution    of  a  Priesthood. — Habit    of   the  High  Priest. — 
Mitre.  —  Ephod. —  BreasttPlate. —  Urim  and  Thummim. —  Robe. 

—  Habit  of  the  Inferior  Priests.  —  Ceremonies  of  Conse- 
cration.—  Further  Directions   respecting   the  Tabernacle. 

—  The  Law  given  on  Tablets  of  Stone.  —  Offence  of  the 
People  in  making  a  Golden  Calf. — Inference  from  this  Act, 
hkspcctino  their  Faith  in  Jehotah.  —  Return  of  Moses  to 
THE  Camp.  —  Destruction  of  the  Idol,  and  Punishment  or 
THE  Offenders.  —  Request  of  Moses  to  behold  a  Vision  of 
THE  Deitt.  —  Radiance  of  Moses'  Face  on  coming  down  from 
THE  Mountain.  —  Erection  of  the  Tabernacle,"  and  Arrange* 

HXIfT   OF   it   foe  future  ReLIGIOUS   SERVICES. 

Directions  having  been  given  respecting  the  pro- 
vision of  a  place  of  worship,  the  next  step  is  to  insti- 
tute a  priesthood,  to  minister  in  the  solemnities,  of  which 
it  was  to  be  the  scene.  Moses  is  commanded  to  ap- 
point his  brother  Aaron,  and  Aaron's  four  sons,  to  the 
office ;  and  minute  instructions  are  given  respecting  the 
dress  in  which  they  should  perform  their  sacerdotal 
duties,  with  a  view  manifestly  to  the  effect  to  be  pro- 
duced on  the  minds  of  'a  rude  people,  in  creating  in 
them  a  sense  of  the  dignity  of  the  priestly  office,  and 
such  a  reverence  for  it  as  would  naturally  be  transferred 
to  the  object  of  that  service  which  the  priests  con- 
ducted. 

The  habit  of  Aaron  and  his  successors  in  the  high- 
priesthood,  was  directed  to  be  distinguished  from  that 
of  the  other  priests,  by  the  addition  of  three  articles; 
the  ephod,  the  breast-plate,  and  the  robe.    Instead  also 


X.]  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.  211 

of  the  turban  worn  by  inferior  priests,  they  were  to  be 
crowned  with  a  mitre  of  peculiar  magnificence. 

The  ephod  was  a  part  of  the  dress,  of  which  we  are 
unable  to  obtain  an  entirely  distinct  idea.  It  was,  how- 
ever, a  garment  apparently  without  sleeves,  divided  be- 
neath the  arms,  and  hanging  down  before  and  behind, 
from  the  throat  nearly  to  the  knees.  Its  material  was  fine 
linen,  richly  embroidered  with  gold,  blue,  purple,  and 
scarlet.  It  was  confined  with  a  girdle  of  like  ma- 
terial and  fashion,  aroynd  the  body,  and  fastened  by 
buckles  of  onyx-stones  set  in  gold,  one  on  each  shoul- 
der, each  inscribed  with  the  names  of  six  of  the  tribes 
of  Israel.  From  these  descended  golden  chams,  which 
were  fastened  to  the  sides  of  the  breast-plate.* 

The  breast-plate  was  to  be  formed  of  twelve  costly 
jewels,  set  in  gold,  arranged  in  four  rows,  and  each 
inscribed  with  the  name  of  one  of  the  tribes.  It  was 
to  be  attached  to  a  piece  of  embroidered  linen,  like 
that  of  the  ephod,  and  so  fastened  by  blue  cords,  passed 
through  golden  rings,  to  that  omament.f  "And,"  or 
"  so,"  it  is  added,  "  thou  shalt  put  m  the  breast-plate 
of  judgment  the  Urim  and  the  Thummim,  and  they 
shall  be  upon  Aaron's  heart  when  he  goeth  in  before 
the  Lord."  J  The  superstitions  invented  by  Jewish 
dreamers  respecting  the  Urim  and  Thummim,  and  re- 
peated by  Christians  of  the  same  character  of  mind, 
it  would  be  a  mere  waste  of  our  time  to  discuss.  The 
words  "Urim"  and  "Thummim,"  (D^^il,  Dn)H,) 
mean  "lights"  and  "perfections."  I  take  them  to  be 
simply  a  name  given  to  the  twelve  magnificent  jewels 
of  the  breast-plate,  which  might  well  be  called  "  Perfect 
Radiance."  The  words  occur  in  only  four  texts  of  the 
Law,  neither  of  which  countenances  in  any  degree  the 
extravagant  notions  which  have  obtained  currency  upon 

*  Ex.  xxviii.  6-14.  f  xxviii.  15-29.  X  xxviii.  30. 


U 


212  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1— XL.  38.  [LECT. 

the  subject-  The  first  is  that  which  I  have  just  quoted. 
The  second,  in  Leviticus,  is  as  follows;  "He  put  the 
breast-plate  upon  him ;  also  he  put  in  the  breast-plate 
the  Urim  and  the  Thuramim  "  ;  *  where  the  last  clause 
should  rather  be  translated,  "  when  he  had  put  in  the 
breast-plate  the  Urim  and  the  Thummim " ;  that  is, 
when  to  the  hnen  substratum  of  the  breast-plate  he 
had  attached  its  jewels.  This  text,  which  speaks  o( 
the  Urim  and  Thummim,  and  says  nothing  of  jewels, 
is  parallel  with  one  in  the  book,  now  before  us,  where 
the  jewels  are  specified  by  name,  and  no  Urim  and 
Thummim  are  mentioned.!  —  The  next  text  is  in  Num- 
bers. "Joshua  shall  stand  before  Eleazar  the  priest, 
who  shall  ask  for  him,  after  the  judgment  of  Urim  be- 
fore the  Lord ; "  J  that  is,  the  high  priest  shall  offer 
prayers  for  him,  according  to  those  most  solemn  and 
ceremonious  forms,  which  require  the  priest  to  put  on 
his  breast-plate,  along  with  the  rest  of  his  most  sumptu- 
ous apparel.  —  The  fourth  is  in  Deuteronomy.  "  Let 
thy  Urim  and  thy  Thummim,"  Moses  says  to  the  tribe 
of  Levi,^  "be  with  thy  Holy  One,  whom  thou  didst 
prove  at  Massah,"  and  so  on ;  that  is,  Clothe  thyself 
in  thy  richest  sacerdotal  vestments  to  serve  and  pro- 
pitiate him,  whom  thy  former  unworthy  conduct  so 
provoked. 

The  robe,  which  though  mentioned  in  this  passage 
after  the  ephod,  was  to  be  worn  beneath  it,||  is  not 
particularly  described,  the  name  probably  being  suffi- 
cient to  mark  a  known  fashion  of  the  times.  It  was 
to  be  put  on  by  dropping  it  upon  the  shoulders  over  the 

•  Lev.  viiL  8.  t  Ex-  xxxix.  10- 13. 

X  Numb.  xxviL  21.  It  may  be  thought  a  corroboration  of  the  view 
which  I  present,  that  in  this  text  we  read  of  the  ^^  judgment  of  Urim,"  a 
similar  expression  to  what  is  used  in  Ebc.  zxviiL  15,  30,  of  the  breast- 
plate. 

§  Deut  xxxiii.  8.  ||  Compare  Lev.  viii.  7. 


X.]  EXODUS   XXVIII.  1.  — XL.   38.  213 

head,  and  its  hem  was  to  be  hung  around  the  feet  with 
alternate  golden  bells,  and  pomegranates  of  some  ma- 
terial dyed  blue.*  —  The  mitre  was  to  be  distinguished 
from  that  of  the  other  priests,  by  a  golden  plate  over 
the  forehead,  engraven  with  the  words,  niHv  'C'i.p, 
"Holiness  to  Jehovah." f 

Such  was  the  distinctive  magnificence  of  the  high- 
priest's  attire.  The  inferior  priests  were  also  to  wear 
a  tunic,  a  girdle,  and  a  turban,  costly  from  their  materi- 
als and  embroidery.^  These  garments,  it  is  to  be  pre- 
sumed, were  national  property.  At  all  events,  that  they 
were  not  worn  except  when  the  priest  was  officiating 
in  his  office,  may  be  inferred  from  various  texts.^  — 
Nothing  is  said  of  any  covering  for  the  hands  or  feet. 
The  former  would  have  been  inconvenient  in  the  per- 
formance of  the  priest's  duties ;  the  latter  would  have 
been  inconsistent  with  the  ideas  of  reverential  deport- 
ment, entertained  among  eastern  nations. || 

The  forms  of  consecration  for  the  priests  are  next 
described,  being  such  as  would  tend  to  impress  on 
their  own  minds,  and  those  of  the  people,  a  sense  of 
the  dignity  of  their  office.  H  After  bathing,  they  were 
to  be  clothed  in  their  sacerdotal  attire,  and  anointed 
with  the  sacred  oil ;  a  ceremony  of  institution  to  the 
highest  offices,  which  we  shall  find  to  be  also  in  use 
in  later  times,  in  the  case  of  teachers  and  of  tem- 
poral rulers.  The  ceremonies  were  then  to  proceed 
with  the  sacrifice  of  a  bullock  for  a  sin-ofFering,  a  ram 
for  a  burnt-ofi'ering,  and  another**  for  a  peace  or  thank 

*  Ex.  xxviiL  31-35.  t  xxviii.  36-38. 

X  xxviii.  40-  42 ;  xxxix.  27-29. 

§  xxviiL  43 ;  Ezek.  xlii.  14 ;  xliv.  19.    This  remark  explains  Acts  xxiiL  5. 
II  Mohammedans  enter  their  mosques  barefoot   Compare  also  Ex.  iiL  5 ; 
Joshua  V.  15. 

t  Ex.  xxix.  1-37. 

**  The  right  ear,  right  hand,  and  right  foot  of  the  priests  was  to  be 


214  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.  [LECT. 

offering.  The  distinctive  nature  and  import  of  these 
sacrifices  we  shall  presently  see  in  another  connexion. 
It  may,  however,  be  remarked  here,  that,  from  the  man- 
ner in  which  they  are  first  introduced  in  precepts  o 
the  Law,  it  seems  probable,  that  they  were  already  in 
use,  and  their  names  and  general  applications  familiarly 
known.*  These  sacrifices  were  to  be  repeated  daily 
through  a  week,  at  which  time  the  ritual  of  consecration 
was  to  be  complete,  and  the  priesthood  fully  establish- 
ed in  its  charge  and  jurisdiction.' 

In  the  thirtieth  chapter,  we  first  find  those  directions 
respecting  the  altar  of  incense,  the  brazen  laver,  and 
provision  for  the  cost  of  the  tabernacle  by  means  of  an 
equal  tax,  which,  for  convenience'  sake,  have  been  already 
mentioned.!  Directions  are  also  given  respecting  the 
composition  of  the  ointment  to  be  used  in  the  ceremo- 
nies of  consecration  of  the  tabernacle  and  the  priests, 
and  of  a  perfume;  sacred  to  the  precincts  of  the  Most 
Holy  Place.J  Questions  naturally  arise  respecting  mi- 
nute provisions  of  this  nature,  to  which,  as  well  as  to 
others  of  different  kinds,  I  designed  remarks,  made  in  a 
former  Lecture,  to  apply.^  Whatever  gave  peculiarity 
to  the  ritual,  gave  it  additional  sanctity  in  such  a  peo- 
ple's view,  —  an  object  which  their  good  required  should 
be  pursued ;  and  this  is  the  evident  principle  of  the 
severe  prohibitions  of  any  imitation  of  what  had  been 
devoted  to  a  sacred  use. 

The  thirty-first  chapter  records  nothing  but  a  desig- 

touched  with  the  blood  of  the  ram  of  the  peace-offering.  Considering  the 
habit  of  early  times,  in  respect  to  conveying  instruction  by  symbols,  it  is 
natural  to  suppose,  that  this  was  designed  for  an  admonition  to  the  priest, 
that  he  should  be  attentive  and  obedient  to  truth  and  duty,  diligent  in 
his  work,  and  heedful  of  his  ways.    Ex.-  xxix.  20. 

*  Compare  x.  25 ;  xxiv.  5. 

t  Pages  207-209;  xxx.  1-10, 17-21,  11-16.  t  xxx.  22-33. 

§  Pages  176-181. 


X.]  EXODUS  XX Vm.  1.  — XL.  38.  215 

nation  of  the  artisans  who  were  to  execute  the  direc- 
tions above  detailed  ;  *  a  repetition  of  the  law  respect- 
ing the  Sabbath,  introduced  here,  I  suppose,  lest  those 
who  had  the  important  work  of  the  tabernacle  in  hand, 
should  imagine  that  its  importance  dispensed  them  from 
the  observance  of  that  rest ;  f  and  the  relation,  that  God 
"gave  unto  Moses,  when  he  had  made  an  end  of  com- 
muning with  him  upon  Mount  Sinai,  two  tables  of 
testimony,  tables  of  stone,  written  with  the  finger  of 
God."  J  "The  finger  of  God"  is  well  understood  to 
denote  any  direct  agency  of  his.§  It  would  seem,  in 
this  instance,  that,  while  Moses  was  himself  left  to  re- 
cord the  details  of  the  Law,||  its  fundamental  principles, 
to  the  end  of  causing  them  to  be  regarded  with  greater 
veneration,  were  committed  to  his  hand,  already  en- 
graven on  durable  stone  tablets,  a  material  used  for  im- 
portant writings  m  the  early  period  of  the  art.  These 
principles,  as  I  before  suggested  in  the  proper  place,  are 
set  forth  in  the  Decalogue ;  and  that  it  was  the  Deca- 
logue, and  not  the  more  extended  Law,  which  was  en- 
graven on  the  tablets,  I  take  to  be  apparent  from  several 
passages.lE 

In  the  thirty-second  chapter  we  read  of  what  might 
naturally  have  been  expected  in  the  present  unsettled 
circumstances  of  the  people ;  a  neglect  of  one  of  the 
important  directions  which  they  had  lately  received, 
amounting  to  a  mutiny  against  the  authority  of  Moses, 
and  accordingly  punished  as  such  with  the  exemplary 
severity  of  military  execution. 

The  offence  actually  committed  in  this  instance  should 
be  understood,  lest,  through  misapprehension  of  it,  erro- 
neous inferences  should  be  made.     "The  contempora- 

*  Ex.  xxxl  1-11.  t  xxxL  12-17.  f  xxxi.  la 

§  See  viii.  19 ;  Luke  xi  20.    Compare  I  Chron.  xxviii.  19. 

II  Ex.  xxiv.  4  If  xxxiv.  28 ;  Deut  v.  22;  ix.  10;  x.  4. 


216  EXODUS  XXVIII.   1.  — XL.  38.  £LECT. 

ries  of  Moses  and  Joshua,"  says  Gibbon,  "  had  beheld 
with  careless  indifference  the  most  amazing  miracles; 

and,  in  contradiction  to  every  known  principle  of  the 

human  mind,  that  singular  people  seems  to  have  yielded 
a  stronger  and  more  ready  assent  to  the  traditions  of 
their  remote  ancestors,  than  to  the  evidence  of  their 
own  senses."  *  —  The  distinct  statement  of  the  ob- 
jection here  proposed,  divested  of  its  form  of  irony, 
is  this.  If  God  had  really  wrought  before  the  eyes 
of  Moses*  contemporaries  such  miracles  as  in  the  his- 
tory are  ascribed  to  him,  it  is  incredible  that  they 
should  have  called  in  question  his  being  and  sovereignty. 
That  they  did  call  these  in  question,  appears  from  their 
idolatries,  related  in  the  same  books  which  record  the 
miracles.  The  miracles,  therefore,  were  not  performed. 
—  The  reply  is,  that  the  idolatries  charged  were  sins 
against  the  second,  and  not  against  the  first  command- 
ment; and  therefore,  though  they  were  highly  blama- 
ble,  and  were  severely  punished,  they  in  no  degree 
imphed  a  denial  or  doubt  of  Jehovah's  sole  and  undi- 
vided sovereignty,  and  accordingly  have  no  weight  to 
establish  the  objection  urged. 

A  careful  reader  will  not  fail  to  see  the  case  before 
us  to  have  been  as  follows.  The  people,  excited  by 
*  the  novelty  of  their  situation,  exulting  in  their  just-ac- 
quired nationahty,  anxious  to  see  their  institutions  ma- 
tured, and  perhaps  moved  by  superstitious  fears  at 
the  thought  of  not  having,  in  the  midst  of  them,  some 
visible  symbol  of  the  divine  leader,  to  whom  they  looked 
for  guidance  out  of  the  mountainous  solitude  in  which 
they  found  themselves  embosomed,  were  impatient  at 
the  prolonged  absence  of  Moses,  on  whom  they  had 
relied  for  the  arrangements  they  were  desiring.  Under 
this  impulse,  they  come  in  a  tumultuous  manner  to 

•  "  History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall,"  &c.,  chap.  15  ad  init. 


X.]  EXODUS  XXVITI.   1  —  XL.   38.  217 

Aaron,  with  a  proposal,  which,  howeyer,  conveys  no 
intimation  of  a  wish  to  renounce  the  authority  under 
which  Moses  had  hitherto  been  communicating  with 
them.  "  Come,"  say.  they  to  him,  as  their  language 
may  properly  be  paraphrased,  "  since  this  Moses,  who 
undertook  to  be  our  leader,  and  to  whom,  if  he  were 
present,  we  would  address  ourselves,  delays  his  return  to 
us  so  long,  make  thou  for  us  an  image,  through  which  we 
may  address  worship  to  the  God  whom  we  have  taken 
for  our  guide."  The  proposal,  as  has  been  remarked, 
was  an  infraction  of  the  second  of  the  commandments, 
which  had  been  audibly  addressed  to  them  on  Sinai. 
But  as  clearly,  it  was  disobedience  to,  not  denial  of,  Je- 
hovah ;  and,  further,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  that  of  that 
commandment  they  had  as  yet  no  written  record ;  that 
it  was  but  recent,  and  not  yet  familiar ;  and  that,  having 
been  but  once  pronounced  in  their  hearing,  it  is  likely 
that  by  many  of  them  its  sense  was  but  imperfectly 
apprehended.  Aaron  showed,  on  the  occasion,  a  culpa- 
ble, but  not  an  extraordinary  weakness.  And  yet  his 
answer  seems  to  have  been  dictated  by  policy,  and  to 
have  been  conceived  in  the  hope,  that,  if  he  could  not, 
by  interposing  the  force  of  selfish  motives,  arrest  the 
progress  of  the  scheme,  he  might  delay  its  consumma- 
tion, till  Moses  should  return,  and  by  his  authority  stay 
further  proceedings.  He  proposed  what  would  require 
of  the  people  a  sacrifice  which  he  hoped  they  would 
not  be  wilhng  to  make,  and  what,  at  ail  events,  could 
not  be  accomplished  without  some  expense  of  time. 
"  Break  off  the  golden  ear-rings,"  said  he,  "  which  are 
in  the  ears  of  your  wives,  of  your  sons,  and  of  your 
daughters,  and  bring  them  unto  me."  *  The  impetuos- 
ity of  the  multitude  was  not  to  be  thus  quelled,  and 

•  Ex.  xxxii.  2. 
VOL.    I.  28 


218  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.  [LECT. 

they  did  as  was  proposed.  Aaron,  on  the  other  hand, 
had  now  involved  himself  in  an  implied  engagement 
from  which  he  had  not  courage  enough  to  recede,  and 
he  proceeded  to  cause  tobe  made  a  symbolical  repre- 
sentation of  the  divinity,  in  the  form  to  which  they  had 
been  used  in  Egypt.*  But  still  every  thing,  shows,  that, 
in  these  measures,  whatever  criminal  haste,  or  inatten- 
tion, or  infatuation,  or  insubordination  was  impUed,  there 
was  no  renunciation  of  Jehovah.  When  the  people 
received  the  image,  they  hailed  it  but  as  a  symbol  of 
the  self-same  God  of  their  fathers,  who  had  "brought 
them  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt,"  and  still  more  express- 
ly, Aaron,  in  appointing  its  consecration-feast,  said, 
" To-morrow  is  a  feast  unto  Jehovah" \ 

Meantime  Moses,  divinely  apprized  in  the  mountain 
of  what  has  been  passing  below,  intercedes  for  the  for- 
giveness of  the  people  with  God,  who  seems  to  put  his 
disinterestedness  to  the  •  trial,  by  proposing  to  him  to 
abandon  them,  and  elevate  himself  and  his  posterity  to 
the  privileges  which  they  should  lose.f  The  proposal, 
if  we  are  so  to  call  it,  seems  to  have  been  made,  —  or, 

*  Joshua  xxiv.  14;  compare  Deut.  xxix.  16,  17. — In  treating  of  the 
manufacture  of  this  ox,  or  calf,  as  it  is  called  in  contempt,  and  of  its 
destruction  by  Moses,  the  folly  of  Jewish  commentators,  and  of  Christian 
';;,commentators  with  Jewish  intellects,' has  had  ample  range.  One  of  the 
lowest  conclusions  drawn  by  them  from  the  account  has  been,  that  Moses 
had  such  "  arch-chemic  "  skill,  that  he  could  both  decompose  gold  by  com- 
bustion, and  make  it  potable,  (xxx.  20.)  The  statement  in  the  text  is 
sufficiently  plain,  to  this  effect  The  body  of  the  image  was  carved  in 
wood,  and  then  covered  over  with  gold  plate.  See  Is.  xl.  19 ;  compare 
Ex.  xxxvii.  10, 11,  with  xxxix.  38;  xl.  5.  When  Moaes  destroyed  it,  he 
burnt  the  wooden  frame,  and  sprinkled  gold  dust,  filed  from  the  plating, 
upon  water,  of  which  he  caused  the  people  to  drink,  thus  professing  their 
contempt  for  it,  as  the  Egyptians  would  have  done,  had  they  eaten  of  the 
flesh  of  their  animal  gods.  —  As  to  the  last  point,  however,  it  might  be  a 
question,  whether,  by  his  "  making  them  drink  of  it,"  is  meant  any  thing 
more,  than  that  he  threw  the  fragments  into  the  stream  to  which  they  had 
recourse  for  water.  Compare  Deut  ix.  21. 
f  Ex.  xxxii.  4,  5.  |  xxxii.  7  -  14. 


X]  EXODUS   XXVIII.   1— XL.  38.  219 

if  I  may  venture  on  a  different  form  of  expression, 
which  I  think  better  represents  the  truth,  the  case  ap- 
pears to  have  been  supposed,  —  in  order  to  exercise 
and  confirm  that  public -spirited  devotion  of  Moses, 
which  was  to  be  so  important  to  him  in  his  future  cares. 
The  answer,  hkewise,  which  it  naturally  and  actually 
prompted  him  to  make,  pledged  him  for  the  future  to 
practise  a  forbearance  towards  the  offending  people, 
like  what  he  had  interceded  with  God  to  manifest,  and 
engaged  him  not  to  be  much  disgusted  and  discouraged 
by  perversity  of  theirs,  which  a  justly  provoked  deity 
could  pardon,  and  had  actually  pardoned,  on  his  solicita- 
tion. And  we  see  the  more  the  usefulness  of  such  a 
lesson  and  pledge,  when  we  observe  the  excited  state 
of  mind  in  which  Moses  was,  as  developed  a  few  verses 
further  on.*  The  threat  also  was  one  which  would 
benefit  the  people,  alarming  them  with  the  thought  of 
desertion  on  the  part  of  their  Almighty  friend,  and 
attaching  them  to  Moses,  who  had  refused  to  be  him- 
self benefited  at  their  expense  ;  and  accordingly  we 
naturally  understand  it  as  having  given  force  to  what  he 
soon  after  says  to  them,  that,  after  sinning  as  they  had 
done,  and  deserving  to  be  abandoned,  he  still  hopes  to 
obtain  their  pardon.f  Does  any  one  object,  that  it  was 
impossible  that  the  event  threatened,  (or,  as  I  would 
rather  state  it,  the  case  supposed,)  could  occur,  inas- 
much as  an  abandonment  of  the  people  would  frustrate 
the  Divine  counsels  previously  revealed  ?  I  reply,  that 
this  circumstance  renders  it  none  the  less  fit  to  be  pro- 
posed for  such  uses  as  have  been  mentioned.  When 
we  read,  for  instance,  of  the  Divine  direction  to  Abra- 
ham to  sacrifice  his  son,  no  one  imagines,  that,  at  any 
period  of  the  transaction,  it  was  actually  the  Divme  pur- 
pose that  he  should  consummate  the  sacrifice  ;  nor  does 

*  Ex.  xxxii.  19.  '  t  xxxiL  30. 


220  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1— XL.  38.  [LECT. 

any  one  conceive,  on  the  other  hand,  that  this  fact  has 
any  thing  to  do  with  the  fitness  of  the  proposal,  as  a 
means  of  proving  and  illustrating  the  patriarch's  faith. 

As  Moses  descends  from  the  mountain  with  the  tablets, 
inscribed  with  the  Ten  Commandments,  in  his  hands,  and 
accompanied  by  Joshua,  they  hear  from  a  distance  the 
shouts  of  the  people's  festivity.*  Approaching  nearer, 
and  unable  any  longer  to  contain  his  indignation  at  the 
miserable  signs  of  disobedience,  of  disorder  and  license, 
which  now  he  witnessed,  he  threw  down  violently  on 
the  ground  the  divinely  given  record  of  the  Decalogue, 
and  broke  it  -in  fragments,  as  if  testifying,  that  they  who 
could  so  seon  and  so  insolently  violate  God's  law,  were 
no  longer  worthy  of  its  possession,  and  the  consequent 
privileges.  The  first  step  he  took  was  to  destroy  utter- 
ly the  idolatrous  image,  and  disperse  its  materials  as 
far  as  fire  and  water  could  scatter  them.  The  next 
was  to  expostulate  with  Aaron,  whose  reply  is  in  the 
highest  degree  natural  under  the  circumstances,  expres- 
sive as  it  is  of  shame  and  fear,  casting  all  the  blame 
possible  upon  others,  and  describing  his  own  agency  in 
that  carefully  selected  general  phraseology,  which  means 
nothing  but  that  he  who  resorts  to  it  is  self- convicted. 
"  Thou  knowest  this  people  already,"  says  he ;  "  thou 
knowest  them,  and  how  unmanageable  they  are.  For 
it  is  they  who  are  to  blame.  They  proposed  to  me 
to  make  a  god.  I  would  have  put  them  off,  by  bid- 
ding them  bring  me  gold.  But  they  brought  it ;  I  put 
it  in  the  fire,  and  behold !  that  calf  came  out."  f 

•  We  have  here  one  of  those  little  touches,  which  mark  a  historian, 
drawing  from  fact,  recording  from  nature.  Joshua,  all  whose  character 
was  military,  when  the  distant  murmur  from  the  valley  catches  his  ear, 
thinks  of  nothing  but  a  hostile  assault  on  the  encampment  Like  Job's 
war-horse,  "  he  smelleth  the  battle  afar  off."  "  There  is  a  noise  of  war,** 
he  says,  (xxxii.  17,)  « in  the  camp." 

t  xxxii.  1.5-24. 


X.]  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.  jggl 

The  incident  had  been  one  of  the  worst  example,  in 
respect  to  the  great  object  for  which  the  people  had 
been  set  apart.  It  was  also  a  high-handed  act  of  insur- 
rection against  Moses  ;  not  to  say,  that  it  had  probably 
been  instigated  by  persons,  who  were  desirous  of  sup- 
planting or  obstructing  him  in  the  authority,  which,  for 
all  the  great  national  objects,  it  was  needful  that  he 
should  exert.  Accordingly,  for  the  same  wise  and  ulti- 
mately merciful  reasons,  which  cause  governments  to 
visit,  with  inflictions  of  memorable  severity,  offences 
which  peculiarly  threaten  the  common  good;  for  the 
protection  and  benefit  of  all,  who  in  after  times  should 
be  in  danger  of  falling  into  a  like  offence ;  for  the  estab- 
hshment  of  that  authority  of  the  lawgiver,  on  whose 
regular  and  undisputed  exercise,  such  vast  interests  de- 
pended ;  for  the  people's  security  against  a  recurrence 
of  disorders,  which  left  them  "  naked  among  their  ene- 
mies," and  exposed  to  fall  easy  victims  to  any  sudden 
inroad  of  the  tribes  among  whom  they  were  wander- 
ing,—  a  signal  punishment  is  decreed  against  the  of- 
fenders. Moses  called  upon  all,  who  were  for  upholding 
the  divinely  appointed  state  of  things,  to  rally  around 
him.  His  family  retainers,  "  the  sons  of  Levi,"  having 
obeyed  the  summons,  he  directed  them  to  pass  through 
the  camp,  and  put  to  the  sword  the  most  prominent 
offenders,  or  those  who  continued  pertinacious,  sparing 
neither  for  ties  of  blood  nor  kindred,  in  such  a  fearful 
exigency  of  the  state ;  "  and  there  fell  of  the  people 
that  day  about  three  thousand  men."  * 

Moses  having  thus  provided  for  the  people's  future 
subordination,  by  the  influence  of  a  wholesome  terror, 
returns  to  the   mountain  to  obtain    their  forgiveness. 

*  Ex.  xxxii.  25-29.  —  Verse  35  is  a  summary  comment  on  this  whole 
transaction,  and  not  the  narration  of  a  subsequent  judgment.  "  iSb  [not 
and]  God  punished  the  people." 


222  EXODUS  XXVIIl.   1.  — XL.  38.  [LECT. 

"  Unworthy  as  they  are,"  he  says,  in  the  language  of 
passionate  entreaty,  "  they  are  still  my  brethren,  the 
people  to  whom  I  -am  devoted,  for  prosperity  or  woe. 
Forgive  them,  or  renounce  me.  Restore  them  to  the 
privileges  they  have  forfeited,  or  else  exclude  me  too 
from  those  privileges  ;  me,  who  have  deserved  no  such 
privation."  "  It  is  enough,"  is  the  reply,  "  to  summon 
those  to  the  forfeiture,  who  have  committed  the  crime. 
You  have  committed  none.  Go  you,  and  fulfil  your 
office.  As  to  those  who  may  further  deserve  punish- 
ment, it  will  be  inflicted  on  them'  at  such  time  as  to 
my  own  wisdom  shall  seem  fit."  *  "  But,"  the  com- 
munication goes  on,  "let  it  be  distinctly  understood  by 
the  people,  on  what  terms  they  afe  to  proceed.  Go 
thou,  and  lead  them  to  the  country  to  which  I  promised 
to  their  fathers  to  give  them  safe  conduct.  But  let 
them  say,  whether  they  will  have  me  in  the  midst  of 
them  as  they  go ;  whether,  setting  up  my  tabernacle 
in  their  camp,  I  shall  appear  among  them  as  their  king ; 
whether  there  is  not  danger,  that  thus  in  virtual  pres- 
ence accompanying  their  march,  I  shall  be  provoked  by 
some  disloyalty  of  theirs,  (stiff-necked  people  as  they 
are,)  and  that,  outraged  by  affronts,  aggravated  by  being 
thus  offered,  as  it  were,  to  my  face,  and  by  unfaithfulness 
to  engagements  voluntarily'  assumed,  I  shall  be  tempted 
to  consume  them  in  the  way.  Let  them  say,  whether 
it  is  not  safer  for  them  to  go  without  such  immediate 
guidance,  than  to  take  the  risk  of  provoking  me  under 
such  peculiar  aggravations,  by  that  perversity  which 
they  so  continually  manifest."  f 

*  Ex.  xxxii.  30-34. 

f  xxxiii.  1-3.  —  I  think  that  the  exposition  of  the  phrase  God's  angel, 
mentioned  above,  (page  182,)  which  represents  it  as  a  designation  of  Moses, 
derives  some  confirmation  from  xxxii.  34,  and  xxxiii.  1,  2.  The  import 
of  the  former  verse,  I  take  to  be  "  Go  lead  the  people  to  whom  I  spake 
concerning  thee, '  Behold,  mine  angel  shall  go  before  thee,' "  &c.     And  the 


X.]  EXODUS   XXVIII.   1.  — XL.  38.  223 

This  form  of  remonstrance  was  obviously  suited  to 
move  the  minds  of  the  people  to  the  result,  which  we 
actually  read  to  have  been  accomplished  by  it.  "  The 
Lord  had  said  further  unto  Moses,  *  Say  unto  the  chil- 
dren of  Israel,  I  might  [not  I  willl  come  into  the  midst 
of  thee  in  a  moment,  and  consume  thee.  But,  outraged 
as  I  have  been,  I  will  take  no  such  summary  vengeance. 
Put  off  your  ornaments,  and  assume  the  signs  of  the  self- 
condemnation  which  becomes  you.  Manifest  the  peni- 
tence which  you  ought  to  feel,  and  I  will  then  announce 
how  I  will  proceed.' "  —  The  people  accordingly  mourn- 
ed, and  put  off  their  ornaments  y  and  the  lesson  needful 
to  be  learned  by  them  having  been  sufficiently  enforced, 
their  penitence  was  accepted.* 

What  we  next  read  of  is,  I  think,  the  sign  which 
God  gave  that  he  was  reconciled,  and  that  he  consented 
to  take  his  place  in  the  midst  of  the  people.  Moses, 
we  are  told,  took  a  tent,  and  pitched  it  outside  the 
camp,  at  a  distance,  and  called  it  the  Tabernacle  of  the 
Congregation.!  By  placing  it  at  a  distance  from  the 
encampment,  he  tested  the  question  who  those  were, 
who,  in  the  character  of  God's  faithful,  were  disposed 
to  resort  to  it.  "Every  one  who  sought  the  Lord" 
accordingly  came  thither ;  and,  this  question  tried,  they 

latter  passage,  I  understand  as  follows ;  "  Go  thou  up  [addressed  to  Moses] 
with  the  people  wiiich  thou  hast  brought  up  out  of  the  land  of  Egypt;  go 
thou  up  with  them  unto  the  land  which  I  sware  unto  Abraham,  &c.  when 
I  said  unto  them,  '  Unto  thy  seed  will  I  give  that  land,  and  will  send  an 
angel  to  give  thee  guidance  to  it'  Be  thou,  Moses,  the  guide,  the  angel, 
whom  I  then  virtually  promised."  —  But  it  is  an  interpretation,  for  which  I 
am  not  strenuous. 

*  Ex.  xxxiii.  4-6. 

t  xxxiii.  7.  —  The  Tabernacle,  properly  so  called,  was  not  yet  con- 
structed. The  Tent  of  the  Congregation  was  either  so  named,  because 
it  had  been  hitherto  in  use  as  a  place  for  meetings  within  the  camp  ;  or, 
more  probably,  because  now  set  up  for  the  first  time,  as  the  place  where 
God's  faithful  people  were  to  distinguish  themselves  by  assembling. 


f 


224  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.        [LECT. 

appear  to  have  returned  to  their  tents,  in  order  that, 
standing  each  in  his  own  door,  they  might  the  better 
see  what  was  to  follow.  Their  penitence  having  been 
thus  evinced,  the  sign  of  its  acceptance  succeeded. 
"  The  cloudy  pillar,"  the  column  of  vapor  which  had 
hitherto  betokened  the  Divine  presence  on  the  top  of 
Sinai,  "  descended  "  thence,  in  the  people's  view  ;  and 
now,  for  the  first  time,  God,  who  had  hitherto  but  mani- 
fested his  presence  on  the  distant  summit,  took  his  place, 
as  King,  in  the  midst  of  Israel.  "And  the  Lord  talked 
with  Moses,"  purposing  by  this  display  of  familiarity 
with  him,  in  the  people's  sight,  to  impress  on  them  fur- 
ther a  conviction  of  his  authority.  The  Tent  of  the 
Congregation  continued  to  stand  there,  till  the  Taberna- 
cle, properly  so  called,  was  set  up ;  Moses  occasionally 
resorting  to  it  for  directions,  which  there  awaited  him, 
while,  during  his  absences,  Joshua,  for  the  more  securi- 
ty, or  the  more  dignity  and  state,  remained  by  it,  as  its 
guard.* 

It  is  enough  to  make  one  weep,  to  think  of  the  ab- 
surd and  offensive  use,  which  has  been  made  by  Jewish 
annotators,  and  Christians,  no  wiser  and  more  inex- 
cusable than  theyj  of  the  interesting  and  instructive 
passage  which  next  follows.  The  mind  of  Moses  had 
not  yet  been  elevated  to  the  conception  of  a  purely 
spiritual  deity.  How  should  it  be  ?  How  can  we  rep- 
resent to  ourselves  the  probability  of  such  an  immense 

•  Ex.  xxxiii.  8-11 ;  compare  xxiv.  16.  — The  cloud  on  Sinai  had  be- 
tokened God's  presence  on  that  height  Its  transfer  to  the  Tabernacle  of 
the  Congregation  was  now  a  symbol  of  his  presence  there.  "  The  cloudy 
pillar  descended "  (9) ;  the  language  is  the  same  as  that  which  had  been 
Tised  of  Moses'  coming  down  from  Sinai,  (xxxii.  7,  15.)  —  Is  it  fanciful  to 
suggest,  that  nothing  was  more  fit  to  banish  from  the  minds  of  the  Israel- 
ites the  idea  of  making  a  material  image  of  the  Deity,  as  they  had  lately 
done,  than  for  him  to  manifest  himself  in  the  midst  of  them  by  a  cloud,  a 
wreath  of  vapor,  a  shape  all  vague,  indefinite,  mutable,  unsubstantial  ? 


i 


X.]  EXODUS   XXVIII.   1.  — XL.  38. 

progress  having  been  made  by  him  beyond  the-  univer- 
sal apprehensions  of  his  age  ?  What  was  the  training, 
by  which  his  mind  had  been  made  receptive  of  such  a 
revelation  ?  And,  if  his  mind  could  have  embraced  it, 
w^here  is  the  record  that  any  such  revelation  had  been 
made  ?  Moses  could  have  had  no  idea  but  of  a  deity 
with  a  body  ;  a  body  glorious,  indeed,  but  definite, 
limited,  and  visible.  The  deity  he  adored  had  held  inti- 
mate communication  with  him  ;  had  signalized  him  with 
peculiar  favor ;  had  appointed  him  to  an  honorable  office ; 
but  as  yet,  had  only  appeared  to  him  in  manifestations 
which  were  not  himself;  in  flame,  in  vapor,  in  thunders, 
by  a  voice.  He  was  moved  with  a  strange  desire  to  look 
on  the  imperial  form  ;  to  gaze,  though  it  should  be  but 
once,  on  the  present  mystery  of  divinity ;  and  he  ven- 
tured to  hope,  that,  when  so  much  had  been  shown  and 
been  given  to  him,  not  .even  this  would  be  denied. 
At  first,  as  if  oppressed  by  the  awe  which  might  well 
accompany  such  a  proposal,  he  made  it  timidly  and 
cautiously ;  and  when,  no  notice  being  taken  of  it,  he 
proceeded  to  urge  it  in  less  equivocal  words,  he  was 
answered  by  the  magnificent  declaration,  that  the  Deity 
was  only  to  be  seen  in  his  doings ;  and  that  it  was 
enough  for  Moses  and  his  people  to  know  him  in  the 
works  of  mercy,  in  which  he  designed  to  appear  in  their 
behalf. 

Of  this  sublime  passage,  I  need  not  explain  what 
hideous  havoc  has  been  made  by  bad  translation,  and 
(if  worse  could  be)  worse  commentary.  Let  me  follow 
it,  with  a  few  remarks,  from  verse  to  verse.  Moses 
begins,  circumspectly  and  reservedly,  by  saying ;  "  Thou 
hast  appointed  me  to  the  high  office  of  guide  of  this 
people ;  but  thou  hast  never  yet  made  me  know  him, 
whom  [or  that,  which]  thou  designest  to  send  with  me ; 
[the  language  is  intentionally  general  and  indirect,  but 

VOL.  I.  29 


226  EXODUS  XXVIII.   1.— XL.  38.  [LECT. 

Moses  understood  that  God  designed  to  be  the  people's 
companion,  and  the  reference  could  only  be  to  him ;] 
thou  hast  never  brought  me  to  his  [or  its]  acquaintance, 
though  thou  hast  assured  me  of  thy  peculiar  confidence 
and  friendship,  and  hast  said,  */  have  known  thee  by 
name,  and  thou  hast  favor  in  my  sight.'  *  Now  there- 
fore, if  I  have  found  favor  .in  thy  sight,  give  me  proof 
of  it,  by  showing  me  thy  way,  [rather,  thy  step^i  thine 
own  movement,  which  implies  visible  presence ;]  that 
/  too  may  know  thee,  [having  seen  thy  form,]  and  may 
truly  enjoy  that  favor  which  thou  hast  assured  pie,  that 
I  possess ;  and  further,  consider  that  this  nation  is  thine ; 
[intimating,  that  it  was  fit  therefore'  that  God  should 
reveal  himself  to  their  delegated  guide.]  "  J  The  lan- 
guage of  Moses  has  hitherto  been  all  indefinite  and 
timid,  as  that  of  a,  person  urging  such  a  suit  might  be 
expected  to  be  ;  and  the  answer  merely  is,  "  As  to  my 
presence,  be  assured  of  it,  till  you  are  brought  to  a  place 
of  repose."  §  Not  discouraged,  Moses  proceeds ;  "  Truly, 
if  that  were  not  so,  we  had  best  advance  no  further.  || 
But  [not  for]  how  am  I,  and  how  are  thy  people  to 
know,  that  thou  art  our  friend,  when  we  are  separated 
from  all  other  nations,  and  without  thy  guidance  should 
be  forlorn?  Is  it  not  by  thine  own  presence  being 
H  with  us  ? "  H  —  words  which  indicate  his  continued 
hesitation  to  express  the  wish  which  occupied  his  mihd. 

*  Ex.  xxxiii.  12. 

"t  For  '"]37;i''nK  'iiy.'iin,  the  Septuagint  has,  I^^a»/r»  fui  <««««•»»,  and  the 
Vulgate,  "  ostende  mihi  faciem  tdam." 

X  xxxiii.  13. 

§  xxxiii.  14.  —  Readers  acquainted  with  Hebrew  will  not  fail  to  ob- 
serve the  humble,  shrinking  tone  of  Moses'  request,  which  the  translation 
very  imperfectly  conveys ;  jn  '•nNyD  N^"DK;  NJ  ■'Jpnin  ;  n.rn  Mjn  ^rpji  '•^. 

II  xxxiii.  15.  Or ;  "  If  that  were  not  so,  thou  wilt  not  lead  us  up  hence," 
and  thy  promise  to  do  so  will  not  be  kept ;  intimating,  that  the  mere  fact 
of  God's  presence  among  the  people  was  a  thing  already  understood. 

If  xxxiiL  16. 


> 


■J- 


X.]  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.  227 

The  reply  is  still  to  the  same  effect;  "You  have 
found  favor  with  me,  and  you  shall  have  my  pres- 
ence, which  you  speak  of;  do  not  fear  but  I  will  con- 
duct you  aS  I  promised."  *  Then  Moses  ventures  at 
last  to  propound  his  request,  and  with  the  abruptness 
which  so  naturally  succeeds  to  hesitation  from  such  a 
cause.  "  I  beseech  thee,"  he  says,  "  show  me  thy  glo- 
rious self."  t  The  reply  is  ;  "  In  your  blindness,  you 
sue  for  an  impossibility ;  you  cannot  see  my  face  ; 
you  may  not,  no  living  man  may,  look  on  that.  Let  it 
suffice  you  to  see  me  in  my  goodness ;  I  have  pro- 
claimed the  name  of  the  Lord  before  thee ;  [I  have 
disclosed  myself  in  my  attributes  ;]  and  I  will  continue 
to  be  gracious  and  merciful  to  you  and  yours  as  here- 
tofore.! And  the  Lord  said.  Behold,  there  is  with  me 
a  place  [that  is  a  place  of  favor  for  thee],  and  thus  thou 
hast  been  set  as  on  a  rock.§  But  still,  as  to  any  sensual 
view  of  my  glorious  presence,  that  is  not  even  for  thee. 
When  my  glory  passes  before  thee,  I  have  placed  thee, 
as  it  were,  in  a  dark  cleft  of  that  rock,  and  veiled  thy 
vision  with  my  hand.||  Yet,  so  far  as  this  I  have  taken 
away  my  hand,  —  so  far  I  have  removed  that  veil,  — 
that  thou  hast  seen  of  me  that  which  comes  after,  that 
which  follows  in  my  train  ; "  viz.  what  are  my  purposes 
for  the  future, H  [which  in  fact  had  been  revealed, 
through  God's  special  favor  to  Moses,]  or,  perhaps,  what 
are  the  results,  what  is  the  sequence,  of  my  present, 
though  invisible  agency. 

It  has  been  remarked,  that  the  descent  of  the  vapory 

*  Ex.  xxxiii.  17.  f  xxxiii.  18.  X  xxxiii.  19,  20. 

§  xxxiii.  21.    See  Psalm  xxvii.  5.  xl.  2.  ||  Ex.  xxxiii.  22. 

IT  xxxiii.  23.  The  word  is  often  used  for  futurity.  See  Is.  xli.  23,  xlii. 
23.  Compare  1  Kings  i.  24 ;  Eccles.  x.  14,  where  one  vowel  point  is 
different.  — In  the  last  three  verses,  I  request  it  may  be  observed  how  the 
sense  is  cleared  by  a  literal  translation  of  the  prseter  tense,  which  stands 
in  the  Hebrew,  instead  of  rendering  it  as  future. 


228  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.— XL.  38.  [LECT. 

column  from  the  top  of  Sinai  to  the  Tabernacle  of  the 
Congregation,  appears  to  have  been  designed  as  signi- 
ficant of  God's  acceptance  of  the  people's  penitence, 
and  of  their  restoration  to  his  favor.  It  was,  however, 
accompanied  by  no  explicit  declaration  to  that  effect. 
This  was  probably  reserved,  and  the  anxiety,  into  which 
they  had  been  thrown,*  protracted,  in  order  to  give 
them  further  time  for  reflection  and  remorse,  ^and  for 
fortifying  themselves  with  better .  resolutions  against 
future  temptation.  In  the  next  chapter  we  read  "of  that 
reconciliation  being  formally  announced  to  Moses,  ac- 
companied with  £^  repeated  admonition  of  the  terms,  on 
which  the  continuance  of  its  benefits  was  to  be  secured. 
He  was  directed  to  come  again  into  the  mountain,  un- 
attended, and  bring  with  him  two  tablets,  to  be  in- 
scribed anew  with  the  precepts  of  the  Decalogue,  and 
preserved  in  the  place  of  those  which  he  had  broken 
in  his  anger.  Having  arrived  there,  and  been  addressed, 
for  his  encouragement,'  by  a  voice  which  proclaimed 
God's  immutable  designs  of  mercy,t  he  offered,  pros- 
trate on  the  earth,  his  supplication  for  his  people,  that 
they  might  be  pardoned  their  iniquity  and  their  sin,  and 
reinstated  in  their  place  as  God's  inheritance,!  and 
was  answered  by  the  annunciation  of  observances,  all 
previously  enjoined,  which,  thus  reinstated,  they  would 
be  required  to  keep;  observances,  all  of  them,  let  it 

*  Ex.  xxxiii.  5. 

t  xxxiv.  5-7.  This  is,  I  think/ Moses'  summary  statement  of  that  as- 
surance of  God's  renewed  favor  to  the  people,  given  at  length  in  10-27. 
In  form,  the  statement  refers  to  xxxiii.  19.  nj?r.  nS  npi  means,  "  will  by 
no  means  utterly  destroy."     Zech.  v.  3. 

t  xxxiv.  8,  9.  Moses  had  lately  asked  (xxxiii.  13),  "If  I  have  found 
favor  in  thy  sight,  show  me  thy  way."  He  now  desists  from  this  request, 
having  been  taught  better,  and  urges  his, suit  only  for  the  people  ;  "If  I 
have  found  favor  in  thy  sight,  let  my  Lord,  I  pray  thee,  go  among  us." 
He  repeats  parts  of  God's  words  in  xxxiii.  3,  and  prays  that  the  threat 
there  held  out  may  be  revoked. 


X.]  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.  229 

be  remarked,  having  special  reference  to  their  protec- 
tion against  that  sin  of  idolatry,  into  which,  by  making  a 
material  representation  of  the  true  God,  they  had  lately 
exposed  themselves  to  fall.* 

Having  now  received  all  the  directions  necessary  to 
the   inimediate   institution    of   divine   worship,   Moses 

•  Ex.  xxxiv."  10-28.  —  "I  make  a  covenant "  ;  (v.  10 ;)  that  is,  I  promis- 
ing to  dispossess^  the  idolatrous  nations,  and  the  people  promising  not  to 
harbour  them.  —  The  direction'in  verge  12,  was  called  for  by  the  late  exhi- 
bition of  the  people's  fickleness;  and. the  same  is  true  of  verse  17.  —  The 
omission  in  verse  13  of  any  mention  of  temples,  points  to  an  earlier  time, 
than  that  in  which  temples  for  worship  were  in  general  use,  and  so  bears 
on  the  question  of  th&  Mosaic  origin  i(f  the  book.  —  With  18-26,  com- 
pare xxiii.  13-19.  The  provisions  are  the  same.  The  repetition  of  rules, 
intended  for  protection  against  idolatry,  was  called  for  by  the  recent  lapse. 
—  In  xxxiv.  20,  as  in  xiii.  13,  what  is  said  of  the  ass,  is  meant  to  apply  to 
all  unclean  animals.  See  Numb,  xviii.  15,  —  "I  will  cast  out  the  nations 
before  thee,  and  enlarge  thy  borders ;  neither  shall  any  man  desire  thy 
land,  when  thou  shalt  go  up  to  appear  before  the  Lord  thy  God  thrice  in 
the  year."  (24.)  This  has  beeYi  commonly  understood  as  if,  during  the 
three  weeks  of  every  year,  that  the  Jews  should  be  assembled  for  the 
solemnities  of  the  great  festivals,  at  their  capital  city,  their  country  should 
be  miraculously  protected.  IMichaelis,  by  way  of  explanation,  appeals  to 
a  practice  of  the  Orientals,  of  the  nature  of  a  conventional  truce  on  such 
occasions.  But  I  submit  whether  the  first  part  of  the  verse  does  not  fully 
explain  the  last  The  humbled  neighbours  of  the  Jews  would  not  even 
venture  to  attack  their  honies,  when  left  for  a  time  defenceless.  —  Moses 
was  himself  to  make  the  record  of  this  communication,  though,  for  dis- 
tinction's sake,  he  received  the  Decalogue  already  written.  (27.)  —  Some 
critics  have  thought  that,  as  the  directions  in  12-26  are  ten  in  number, 
verse  28  relates  to  them.     But  compare  Deut  x,  1-4. 

Of  the  passage  xxxiv.  29  -  35,  in  the  uncertainty  respecting  the  two 
principal  words  7^\Q^  (translated  veil,  but  used  nowhere  else,  and  not  ex- 
plained by  its  etymology),  and  pp  (translated  shone,  but  found  only  in 
one  other  place,  Ps.  Ixix.  32,  and  there  rendered  to  have  horns,  as  it  is 
also,  in  this  passage,  in  the  Vulgate  version),  it  seems  unsafe  to  say  any 
thing  more,  than  that,  as  part  of  the  arrangement  for  impressing  the  minds 
of  the  Israelites,  Moses,  when  he  came  down  from  the  mountain,  was 
made  to  carry  his  commission  visibly  about  him,  by  some  extraordinary 
token  of  his  having  just  stood  in  the  Divine  presence.  Even  this  is  by 
no  means  clear.  It  is  better  to  say  at  once,  that  we  cannot  translate  the 
passage.  It  is  one  of  not  a  few  cases  in  the  interpretation  of  these  books, 
in  which  a  confession  of  ignorance  is  at  once  most  fair,  most  modest, 
and  most  safe. 


230'  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.  [LECT. 

descended  from  the  mountain,  and  communicated  them 
to  the  people,  renewing  the  command  not  to  work  on 
the  Sabbath  day,  which  otherwise,  in  their  zeal  for  the 
speedy  execution  of  a  sacred  work,  they  might  have 
supposed  they  were  justified  in  doing.* 

I  have  before  proposed  the  question,  how,  if  the 
author  of  the  book  of  Exodus  had  written,  while  the 
Tjibernacle  stood  in  its  completeness,  or  at  a  time  when 
memory,  or  tradition,  or  history,  retained  the  record  of 
its  appearance,  it  is  natural  to  suppose,  that  he  would 
have  described  that  structure.  I  will  not  venture  to 
reply,  that  he  would  certainly  have  contented  himself 
with  merely  delineating  the  proportions,  and  descanting 
on  the  effect  of  the  one  finished  whole ;  that  he  would 
have  stopped  short  in  a  picturesque  description.  What 
he  might  have  done,  and  the  very  extent,  I  thinks  of 
what  it  is  supposable  that  he  would  have  done,  is  indi- 
cated to  us  in  the  account  actually  given,  by  a  writer 
so  circumstanced,  of  the  erection  of  Solomon's  Temple. 
That  operation  too  is  regarded  by  its  narrator  with  the 
utmost  interest  ;  and  accordingly  he  records  every 
step  and  method  of  it  with  great  particularity.  But  he 
records  them  only  once.  How  different  the  account 
in  Exodus  ;  and  how  difficult  to  conceive  that  it  should 
have  proceeded  fi-om  any  writer,  except  one  circum- 
stanced as  Moses  is  described  to  have  been.  Before 
any  thing  had  been  done  towards  the  building  of  the 
Tabernacle,  —  while  all,  in  relatioij  to  it,  was  future,  — 
minute  directions  respecting  that  edifice  are  conveyed  to 
him.  All  of  them  were  important ;  and  that  no  one 
might  be  lost  from  his  memory,  or  misunderstood,  he 
records  them  successively  as  they  are   given.     The 

1 _, : 

•  Ex.  XXXV.  2,  3 ;  compare  xxxi.  12  - 17.  The  opportunity  seems  to  have 
been  used  to  improve  upon  the  rule,  by  prescribing  (3)  a  stricter  domestic 
observance  than  as  yet  had  been  required. 


X]  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.  231 

record  is  at  length  completed,  and  is  preserved  in  its 
finished  state,  in  what  are  now,  according  to  our 
division,  the  twenty-fifth,  twenty-sixth,  and  twenty- 
seventh  chapters  of  Exodus.  Next,  its  contents  are 
communicated  to  the  artisans,  and  the  work  is  begun. 
Another  subject  of  interest  now  occurs.  It  is,  the  cor- 
respondence of  the  work,  as  it  proceeds,  with  the  di- 
rections which  have  been  given  relating  to  its  several 
parts.  These  parts  are  successively  brought  to  Moses, 
as  they  are  finished ;  and  as  they  are  brought,  they  are, 
for  greater  exactness  and  security,  compared  with  the 
directions  for  them,  and  a  note  of  their  correspond- 
ence, in  all  particulars,  with  those  directions,  is  made. 
Thus  grows  up  an  inventory  of  the  Tabernacle  and  its 
furniture,  which,  in  its  terms,  is  little  more  than  a  repe- 
tition of  the  original  orders,  and  which  we  have,  in  its 
complete  state,  in  the  thirty-sixth  and  thirty-seventh 
chapters.  —  Under  the  circumstances,  in  which  Moses 
is  represented  to  have  been,  it  was  the  most  natural 
thing  possible,  that  he  should  thus  first  record  his  di- 
rections, and  then  record  severally,  successively,  and 
circumstantially,  the  manner  of  their  execution.*  But 
who  can  conceive  of  the  state  of  a  mind,  which,  in  a 
later  age,  would  produce  a  composition  in  such  a  form  ?  f 
It  is  obvious  that  similar  remarks  apply  to  the  direc- 
tions given  respecting  the  attire  and  consecration  of  the 
priests,  compared  with  the  later  record  of  their  execu- 

•  Compare  Ex.  xzxiz.  32-  43. 

f  As  we  have  seen  above,  what,  if  I  may  use  such  language,  looks  like 
the  Order  and  Account  Book,  so,  who  does  not  recognise  the  form  of 
journal-entry  in  xxxvi.  4-7? — Again;  in  the  heading  of  the  passage, 
beginning  xxxviii.  21,  we  seem  to  trace  the  entry  by  Moses,  in  its  place, 
of  a  written  report,  "by  the  hand  of  Ithamar,  son  to  Aaron  the  priest," 
of  the  state  of  the  property  which  he  had  been  appointed  to  inspect 
The  word  nps  (to  visit,  hence  to  inspect)  used  in  this  verse,  with  its 
derivative  noun,  is  peculiar. 


232  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.  [LECT. 

don.*  We  must  needs  go  further,  however,  and  ob- 
serve, that  the  argument  is  cumulative.  That  such  a 
phenomenon  should  occur  once,  must  be  allowed  to  be 
extraordinary.  That  it  should  be  seen  repeatedly,  is  at 
least  a  fact  of  exceedingly  great  weight,  if  I  may  not 
call  it  a  conclusive  one. 

The  fortieth  chapter  relates  to  us  that  great  event, 
the  first  institution  of  the  Jewish  worship,  by  the  set- 
ting up  and  furnishing  of  the  place  of  its  solemn  cere- 
monial. "In  the  first  month,  in  the  second  year,  on  the 
first  day  of  the  month,"  that  is,  one  year,  within  fourteen 
days,  after  the  people's  escape  from  Egypt,  the  Taber- 
nacle was  erected  by  Moses,  and  the  sacred  objects, 
which  it  was  to  enclose,  were  installed  with  proper 
observance  in  their  respective  places.f 

In  respect  to  the  statement,  "  Then  a  cloud  covered 
the  tent  of  the  congregation,  and  the  glory  6f  the  Lord 
filled  the  tabernacle,"  J  I  am  at  a  loss,  such  is  its  brevity, 
to  decide  whether  or  not  it  is  intended  to  describe  a 
supernatural  phenomenon.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is  en- 
tirely natural  to  suppose,  that  a  miraculous  recognition 
of  the  Tabernacle,  now  first  set  up,  as  God's  future 
dwelling,  should  be  exhibited  to  the  people's  view.§ 
On  the  other  hand,  it  seems  to  me,  that  a  cautious  critic 
will  hardly  feel  authorized  to  deduce  confidently  from 
the  words  more  than  the  following  sense ;  that  the  fire, 
which  betokened  the  leader's  presence,  "was  now  for  the 
first  time  kindled  at  the  Tabernacle,  its  smoke  ascend- 
ing over  that  structure,  in  the  people's  view,  and  thence- 
forward the  Glory  of  the  Lord,  the  Divine  Majesty,  the 
Heavenly  Presence,  occupied  its  prepared  abode.  ||     If 

*  Compare  Ex.  xxviii.  xxix.  with  Ex.  xxxix.  and  Lev.  viiL  ix. 
f  The  remark  in  the  last  two  paragraphs  may  here  be  repeated.    Com- 
pare xl.  1-11,  with  16-30. 
\  xl.34.  §  Compare  xxxiii.  9. 

U  3^^  commonly  translated  cloitd,  is  from  the  verb  jjj;?,  to  cover,  and 


■<* 


X.]  EXODUS  xxvm.  1.  — XL.  38.  233 

it  be  remarked,  that  this  exposition  scarcely  accounts 
for  the  statement  in  the  next  verse,  that  "Moses  was 
not  able  to.  enter  into  the  tent  of  the  congregation, 
because  the  cloud  abode  thereon,  and  the  glory  of  the 
Lord  filled  the  Tabernacle,"  I  submit,  that  these  words 
are  very  naturally  understood  to  denote,  that  Moses  was 
withheld  by  ^  becoming  awe  from  approaching  what 
he  henceforward  regarded  as  the  Divine  abode ;  or, 
more  particularly,  (an  exposition  which  I  believe  will 
be  sustained  by  all  that  we  know  of  Moses'  relations 
to  the  w^orship  and  people,)  that,  having  now  arranged 
the  Tabernacle,  and  prepared  it  for  the  occupation  of 
its  Divine  tenant,  his  office  there  was  closed,  and  that, 
being  no  priest,  but  only  a  common  Levite,  he  might  not 
thenceforward  venture  to  pass  its  portal.* 

But,  if  we  adopt  the  first-mentioned  and  more  com- 
monly received  view  of  the  cloud  here  spoken  of,  and 
regard  it  as  a  miraculous  appearance,  —  an  interpreta- 
tion, for  which  there  is  certainly  some  color,  —  I  con- 
appears  to  be  equally  susceptible  of  being  used  of  a  vapor  raised  by  com- 
bustion, or  smoke,  as  of  that  collected  by  evaporation,  or  a  cloud.  Com- 
pare Lev.  xvL  13;  Ezek.  viii;  11.  Psalm  cxlviii.  8,  shows  how  freely  such 
words  are  interchanged.  The  word  there  properly  rendered  vapor  (niD'p) 
is  almost  always  used,  though  not  here,  for  the  vapor  produced  by  flame. 
*  Further ;  I  propose  a  different  translation  of  verses  33  and  34,  as 
follows ;  "  So  Moses  finished  the  work,  and  he  covered  the  tent  of  the  con- 
gregation with  a  cloud,"  that  is,  lighted  a  fire,  as  the  consummating  act, 
from  which  smoke  floated  over  the  Tabernacle.  For  instances  of  the  verb 
nD3,  in  the  Piel  form,  governing  two  accusatives,  see  Ezek.  xvi.  10,  xviii. 
7,  16.  —  Such  a  text  as  Lev.  ix.  23,  proves  nothing  to  the  contrary  of  what 
I  have  suggested  of  Moses'  right  to  enter  the  sacred  edifice.  Our  trans- 
lation is  altogether  more  definite  than  the  original,  which  would  be  very 
well  translated;  "Moses  and  Aaron  went  to  the  Tabernacle."  When 
they  "  came  out,"  it  was  fi:om  the  court  where  the  Tabernacle  stood,  and 
where,  from  its  small  size,  "  the  people,"  whom  they  "  blessed,"  could  not 
have  been  collected.  The  preposition  which  in  this  verse  our  translators 
have  rendered  "  into,"  is  Sn,  the  same  which  is  used  in  Numbers  xii.  4, 
and  there  properly  translated  "unto,"  since  it  was  plain  that  Miriam,  at 
least,  could  not  enter  the  Tabernacle.    Compare  Deut  xxxi.  14. 

VOL.  I.  30 


234  EXODUS  XXVIII.  1.  — XL.  38.  [LECT. 

ceive,  that  it  would  be  altogether  rash  to  attribute,  on 
that  ground,  the  same  miraculous  character  to  the  cloud, 
related  in  the  last  three  verses  to  have  been  perma- 
nently seen  above  the  Tabernacle.  On  that  supposition, 
what  the  writer  tells  us  I  understand  to  have  been  as 
follows  ;  By  a  miraculous  manifestation,  the  Divine 
Majesty  took  first  possession  of  the  sacred  tent  pre- 
pared for  it.  He  visited  and  occupied  it  with  the  sign 
of  a  prince's  and  a  leader's  presence.  And  thence- 
forward it  was  always  acknowledged  as  his  abode,  by 
"the  house  of  Israel,  throughout  all  their  journeys"; 
insomuch  that,  according  as  its  motion  or  rest  was  indi- 
cated by  the  smoke  or  flame  of  the  fire  kindled  in  its 
precincts,  the  march  to  follow  it  was  marshalled,  or  the 
encampment  around  it  remained  undisturbed. 


XI.]  LEVITICUS  I.  1.  — IX.  24.  235 

LECTURE   XI. 

LEVITICUS    I.   1.— IX.  24. 

Time  occupied  bt  the  Events  recorded  in  Leviticus.  —  The 
Worship  of  the  Hebrews  consisted  or  Offerings. — Ques- 
tion whether  the  Worship  of  Offerings  was  originally  op 
Human  or  Divine  Institution.  —  The  Mosaic  Code  found  the 
Practice  existing. —  Materials  of  Offerings  prescribed  by 
the  Law.  —  Manner  of  presenting  them,  and  Objects  design- 
ed to  be  served.  —  Place  where  they  must  be  presented, 
AND  Purpose  of  its  Designation.  —  Revenues  of  the  Priest- 
hood.—  Forms  of  Consecration  of  the  Priests.  —  Entrance 
OF  Aaron  on  his  Functions. 

The  titles  of  the  books  of  the  Pentateuch,  as  they 
stand  in  the  Hebrew  Bible,  consist  of  the  first  words  of 
those  books  respectively.  The  names  by  which  we 
know  them,  intended  to  be  descriptive  of  their  principal 
subjects,  are  of  Greek  origin,  having  been  first  used  in 
the  Septuagint  version,  from  which  they  were  adopted 
into  the  Vulgate.* 

The  time  occupied  by  the  transactions  recorded  in 
the  book  of  Leviticus,  is  one  month.t  We  shall  find  it 
to  consist  chiefly  of  a  record  of  the  publication  of  vari- 
ous laws ;  laws,  which  it  seems  probable  that  Moses  had 
received  authority  to  promulgate,  during  his  second  pro- 
longed stay  m  the  upper  mountainous  region.}     When 

•  Tinnf,  Genesis,  Crttition,  our  translators  have  retained  unaltered  ;  to 
'£|*)«f,  Departure,  and  AuiirtKn,  relating  to  the  Levitical  Law,  they  have 
only  given  a  Latin  termination,  following  the  Vulgate  ;  'A(Jfui,  Numbers, 
they  have  translated  like  that  version ;  and  of  Aivnfnifuot,  Second  LatOf 
they  have  but  Anglicized  the  form  of  the  two  laat  syllables. 

t  Compare  Ex.  xl.  17,  Numbers  i.  1. 

t  Ex.  xxxiv.  28;  Deut  ix.  18. 


236  LEVITICUS  I.  1.  — IX.  24.  [LECT. 


•4 


the  first  time  he  had  been  absent  from  the  camp  for 
several  weeks,  it  was  to  receive  directions  respecting 
the  arrangements  for  a  place  of  worship  and  a  priest- 
hood.* Of  the  revelations  made  to  him  during  his 
^  second  absence,  we  have  no  full  account  in  connexion 
with  the  recital  of  the  factf  When,  immediately  after 
the  erection  of  a  place  of  worship,  we  find  him  announc- 
ing rules,  many  of  which"  could  not,  from  their  nature, 
be  observed,  till  that  had  been  prepared,  while  all,  by 
their  publication  from  its  sacred  precincts,  would  give 
and  receive  sanctity  through  the  association,  it  is  natural 
to  regard  them  as  the  same,  which  were  the  fruit  of  his 
meditations,  and  the  subject  of  revelations  received  by 
him,  during  the  period  of  his  retirement.  Nor  are  we 
at  a  loss  for  a  reason,  why  the  publication  of  that  portion 
of  them,  which  might  have  earlier  gone  into  effect,  was 
delayed  through  the  few  months  before  the  Tabernacle 
was  finished.  During  that  time,  the  attention  of  no 
small  portion  of  the  people  must  have  been  engrossed 
by  the  work.  The  excitement  which  undoubtedly  was 
created,  as  it  went  on  and  drew  towards  its  conclusion, 
must  have  favorably  prepared  the  way  for  the  recep- 
tion of  further  revelations ;  and,  after  reflecting  and  prac- 
tising for  a  httle  time  upon  the  compendious  law  which 
they  had  already  received,  the  people  would  be  the 
better  prepared  to  understand  the  spirit  and  uses  of 
regulations  designed  for  its  improvement.^ 

•  Ex.  xxiv.  18  ;  compare  xxv-xxxL 

t  The  brief  record  in  Ex.  xxxiv.  10-27,  wDl  not  be  thought  to  invali- 
date this  remark. 

X  The  divine  communications  to  Moses  had  been  hitherto  made,  for 
the  most  part,  on  the  mountain.  Henceforward  they  are  made  "  out  of  the 
Tabernacle,"  i.  1.  But  how  "out  of  the  Tabernacle"?  In  reply,  an 
unauthorized  inference  is  commonly  drawn  from  Ex.  xxv.  22.  When 
Moses,  standing  anjrwhere  within  the  Tabernacle  precincts,  received 
supernatural  communications,  God  was  properly  said  to  commune  with  him 
from  that  mercy-seat,  where  he  was  represented  to  have  taken  up  his 

If 


Jkd 


XI.]  LEVITICUS   I.  1.  — IX.  24.  237 

The  Legal  Worship  of  the  Hebrews  was  Offering; 
—  not  prayer,  said  or  chanted,  nor  instrumental  music, 
nor  any  like  form  of  devotion,  —  but  the  presenting  to 
the  Deity  of  articles  of  food  and  drink.  And  the  fun- 
damental directions  respecting  this  ritual  are  given  in. 
the  passage  now  before  us. 

It  is  certain,  that  the  institution  of  this  kind  of  wor- 
ship did  not  originate  with  Moses.  From  the  earliest 
times.  Offerings  have  made  the  prevailing  form,  in  which 
the  spirit  of  devotion  has  endeavoured  to  express  itself. 
That  the  practice  was  well  known  to  Moses  as  having 
existed  in  ages  anterior  to  his  own,  is  evident  from  not 
a  few  passages  of  his  first  book.*  And  the  first  direc- 
tions of  his  Law  concerning  Offerings  are  introduced  in 
a  way,  which  indicates,  that  he  was  not  propounding  a 
new  form  of  devotion,  but  regulating  the  ritual  of  one 
already  understood  and  used.  "  When  any  man  of 
you,"  says  he,  "  shall  bring  an  offering  to  the  Lord,  ye 
shall  bring  your  offering  of  the  cattle,  even  of  the  herd 
and  of  the  flock." 

The  question,  formerly  much  moved,  whether  the 
Worship  of  Offerings  was  originally  of  human  or  Divine 
institution,  is  one,  which,  in  the  absence  of  suflScient 
historical  data,  it  seems  impossible  peremptorily  to  de- 
cide ;  though  the  burden  of  proof  may  be  thought  to 
lie  on  those  who  maintain  the  latter  view.f     It  is  not  a 

abode.  Compare  xxix.  42.  —  The  fact  of  his  thus  receiving  successive  di- 
rections to  publish  laws,  (i.  1 ;  iv.  1 ;  vi.  1,  8  et  seq.,)  is  in  no  sort  incon- 
sistent with  the  view,  above  presented,  of  his  having  received  authority 
respecting  those  laws  at  a  previous  time.  On  Mount  Sinai  he  had  been 
instructed  concerning  them ;  from  the  Tabernacle  he  was  told  how,  in 
due  order,  to  make  them  public. 

*  E.  g.  Gen.  iv.  3-5;  viii.  20;  xii.»7;  xiii.  4;  xv.  9-11  ;  xxii.  13. 

t  I  cannot  argue  against  the  latter  view,  as  some  have  done,  from  such 
texts  as  Psalm  xl.  6, 1.  8- 14,  li.  16,  Is.  i.  11,  Jer.  vi.  20,  vii.  22,  Amos  vL 
20,  Hos.  vi.  6,  Mai.  i.  10.  They  appear  to  me  only  to  declare  the  worth- 
lessness  of  outward  observances,  when  compared  with  internal  purity. 


238  LEVITICUS  I.  1.  — IX.  24.  [LECT. 

question  to  be  settled  by  authority ;  else  such  authorities 
as  those  of  Maimonides,  Ben  Gerson,  and  Abarbapel, 
among  the  Jews;  Justin  Martyr,  Irenaeus,  Tertullian, 
Chrysostom,  Theodoret,  and  Cyril,*  among  the  ancient 
fathers  of  the  church ;  and  Grotius,  Spencer,  and  War- 
burton,  among  modern  Christian  writers,  all  of  whom 
have  maintained  the  human  origin  of  the  observance, 
would  certainly  be  entitled  to  great  consideration.  Nor 
can  the  very  extensive,  not  to  say,  universal  prevalence 
of  the  custom  from  the  first,  be  interpreted  as  proof  of 
its  having  had  its  foundation  in  some  early  divine  pre- 
cept, provided  one  can  show  that  it  may  natm'ally  have 
had  its  rise  in  some  essential  tendency,  or  universal 
habit,  of  the  human  mind. 

Accordingly,  those  who  hold  to  the  human  origin  of 
this  form  of  worship,  insist  that  the  problem  of  its  preva- 
lence is  fully  solved  by  well-known  tendencies  of  uni- 
versal human  thought  and  feeling.  It  is  the  most  natu- 
ral expression,  say  they,  to  an  unenUghtened  mind,  of 
those  sentiments  of  devotion  to  which  it  would  give 
body  and  utterance.  Touched  with  a  sense  of  blessings 
received,  it  would  make  a  present  to  its  deity  to  evince 
its  gratitude.  Oppressed  with  remorse  or  fear,  what  it 
would  first  think  of  would  be,  to  propitiate  him  by  a 
gift.  Anxious  to  obtain  a  good  in  prospect,  it  would 
urge  its  suit  by  an  act  manifesting  its  attachment  and 
reverence.  To  these  ends,  the  worshipper  would  give 
what  he  had  to  give.  In  a  primitive  state  of  society, 
property  would  chiefly  consist  in  the  flocks  and  herds 
which  its  possessor  had  tended,  or  the  fruits  which  his 
culture  had  produced ;  and  these  he  would  present  by 
sequestering  them  from  cgmmon  use,  and  leaving  them 
exposed  where  he  would  think  his  deity  might  find  them ; 

•  For  particular  references  to  theae  writers,  see  Spencer  "  De  Legibus 
Hebreorum,'*  lib.  3,  diss.  3,  cap.  1,  §  2. 


XL]  LEVITICUS  I.  L  — IX.  24.  239 

or  he  would  send  them  up,  on  a  column  of  flame,  to 
the  upper  region  of  the  ah-,  which  his  deity  was  under- 
stood to  inhabit.  The  more  ample  and  costly  were 
such  offerings,  the  greater,  of  course,  the  evidence  they 
would  afford  of  self-renunciation,  of  submission,  of  strong 
emotion  and  eai-nest  desire  of  whatever  kind ;  and  hence 
holocausts  and  hecatombs.  In  its  highest  excitement, 
coupled  with  conceptions  of  the  Divinity  as  being  san- 
guinary and  vindictive,  the  feeling  would  lead,  as  it 
actually  did,  to  the  enormity  of  human  sacrifices,  and 
even  to  the  selection  of  victims  the  most  dear  to  the 
state,  or  the  individual,  who  offered  them.* 

Though,  to  my  mind,  these  views  sufficiently  explain 
the  origin  of  the  practice,  rendering  unnecessary  the 
hypothesis  of  a  Divine  precept  prescribing  it,  still  I  can- 
not urge  this  conclusion,  as  at  present  of  great  im- 
portance in  any  view.  On  the  contrary,  I  must  own, 
that  the  question  appears  to  me  to  have  been  agitated 
with  a  warmth,  altogether  disproportioned  to  any  intrin- 
sic interest  which  it  possesses.  If  of  human  institution, 
the  usage  was  prompted  by  such  feelings  as  have  been 
described.  If  of  Divine  institution,  it  had  reference  to 
such  feelings,  being  designed  by  him  who  "  considereth 
our  frame,"  as  a  suitable  means,  which  it  would  be, 
under  proper  regulations,  for  their  gratification  and  ex- 

*  Some  writers,  who  hold  to  the  human  origin  of  sacrifices,  as  Mede 
(Works,  book  2,  chap.  7),  Cudworth  (Discourse  on  the  Lord's  Supper),  and 
Sykes,  give  a  different  account  of  their  origin,  regarding  them  as  what  they 
call  a  "  federal  rite."  This  expression  is  explained  by  the  last-named  writer, 
(Essay  on  Sacrifices,  p.  73,)  where  he  says,  that  tlie  origin  of  sacrifices 
may  be  accounted  for  on  the  ground,  that  "  eating  and  drinking  together 
were  the  known  ordinary  symbols  of  friendship,  and  were  the  usual  rites 
of  engaging  in  covenants  and  leagues."  Dr.  Magee  (On  the  Atonement, 
VoL  ii.  p.  22,)  well  objects  to  this  theory,  that  at  most  it  accounts  only 
for  those  sacrifices  called  "peace-offerings,"  of  which  the  offerer  took  a 
share,  and  not  at  all  for  those  which  consisted,  as  did  many  in  use  among 
idolaters,  of  animals  not  used  for  food. 


24G  LEVITICUS  I.  1.  — IX.  24.  [LECT. 

pression.  The  fittest  forms  of  worship,  at  any  given 
time,  are  undoubtedly  those,  which  most  appropriate- 
ly indicate,  and  most  effectually  cherish,  the  devout 
feelings  of  the  worshipper.  What  these  will  be,  at  any 
time,  will  depend  on  the  worshipper's  mental  habits ; 
on  the  degree  of  his  intellectual  cultivation,  and  ot  the 
correctness  and  liveliness  of  his  apprehensions  of  God. 
For  the  same  reason,  then,  that  God  calls  on  us  Christians 
to  address  him  in  words  of  prayer,  which  in  our  state 
of  culture  make  the  natural  and  approved  expression  of 
internal  feelings  of  devotion,  he  might  be  expected,  with 
a  like  adaptation  to  a  less  advanced  state  of  the  wor- 
shippers' minds  in  earlier  ages,  to  call  on  them  to  ad- 
dress him  with  the  offering  of  that  service,  with  which 
all  their  religious  feelings  would  be  naturally  associated.* 
Whether  its  remote  origin,  then,  were  in  human  or 
Divine  arrangement,  the  presenting  of  offerings  was,  at 
the  time  of  the  delivery  of  the  Jewish  Law,  the  accus- 
tomed and  established  form  of  the  expression  of  devout 
emotions.  Assuredly  it  would  have  been  no  wisdom  to 
condemn  to  disuse  those  outward  acts,  which  made  up, 
for  every  man,  the  habit  of  devotion ;  —  those  acts,  which, 
through  the  infallible  power  of  permanent  associations  be- 
tween acts  and  feelings,  (a  power  which  makes  itself  felt, 
even  when  such  associations  are  accidental  and  arbitrary 
in  their  origin,)  kindled,  as  they  were  performed,  a  devout 
fervor  of  the  spirit.  It  was  wisdom,  to  take  up  these 
observances,  with  all  their  holy  and  profitable  influences, 
and  make  them  do  for  the  worshipper,  in  all  respects, 
the  work  which  his  religious  improvement  required,  by 

*  The  better  ancient  critics  understood  this.    Says  Chrysostom ;  &tif 

ti  rfi*irtii,  »u  furaCaXXtretty  eiil  iip'  ivi^Mf  t'lf  iripav  fiirarlitrai  ytufinit  Oo 
vtri  f4,if  revTt  3a«<^a^i/,  wtrl  it  irt^it.  'AXX*  aurif  /xh  i)t  ar^itrrt;,  xai  avaXXtit- 
Tt(,  igfiiZirai  *fO(  riit  artiiuaf  nt  it^^airitnt.  AaXtT  t  ^io(,  xa)  ttftt^irti  trtXXi- 
*'(>  '"X  *'f  '■^'^'l  ^ifitrmi,  ctXX'  i{  tifttif  tmvin  iufdfiifi.     Homil.    in    Psal.    95. 

(Opera,  Tom.  I.  p.  917,  Eton  Edit)    Compare  Ez.  xx.  25 ;  Mat  xix.  8. 


H.]  LEVITICUS  I.  1— IX.  24.  241 

regulating  them  in  such  a  manner  as  to  deprive  them 
of  power  to  mislead  into  error,  and  to  invest  them  with 
power  to  suggest  truth  and  awaken  a  sense  of  duty; 
and  to  lead  the  thoughtful  mind  away  from  the  mere 
outward  observance,  to  the  sense  and  feeling  it  was  de- 
signed to  imbody  and  excite,  by  giving  them,  in  their 
several  definite  forms,  a  substantial  and  affecting  use  and 
meaning. 

These,  and  other  similar  objects,  relating  to  individual 
improvement,  and  to  the  national  well-being,  the  laws 
of  Moses  respecting  worship  were  actually  adapted  to 
promote.  The  spirit  and  intent  of  these  laws  is  in  many 
respects  sufficiently  manifest ;  and,  in  not  a  few,  we  find 
occasion  to  admire  the  fitness  of  an  arrangement  to 
accomplish,  along  with  some  great  leading  object,  a 
variety  of  others,  not  only  subordinate,  but  distinct.  In 
considering  others,  it  is  no  wonder  if  we  are  somethnes 
at  a  loss  in  respect  to  the  end  contemplated.  Under 
the  circumstances,  it  could  not  fail  to  be  so.  For  the 
regulation  had  in  view  the  connection,  and  (in  order  to 
be  effectual)  often  the  indirect  correction,  of  errors  of  a 
state  of  society,  which  has  not  only  long  since  passed 
away,  but  which  has  left  no  record,  except  in  these  very 
laws  of  which  we  are  seeking  the  interpretation. 

In  treating  of  the  Mosaic  ritual  in  respect  to  offerings, 
it  may  be  well  to  consider  severally  ;    1.  Their  materials. 

2.  Their  manner  and  object,  which  are  so  connected 
that    they    ai-e    most    conveniently    treated    together. 

3.  Their  place. 

1.  Their  materials.  These  are  to  be  classed  under 
two  general  divisions ;  the  bloody,  or  animal  offerings ; 
and  the  bloodless,  or  vegetable. 

Animal  offerings  were  either  of  beasts,  or  of  birds. 
There  is  no  instance,  or  intimation,  of  any  kind  of  fish 
being  used  for  the  purpose.    The  birds  appointed  for 

VOL.   L  31 


242  LEVITICUS  I.  1.  — IX.  24.  [LECT. 

sacrifice  were  turtle-doves  and  pigeons,*  both  of  which 
species  abounded  in  Palestine.  Of  quadrupeds,  the 
prescribed  kinds  were  the  ox,  the  goat,  and  the  sheep, 
all  of  them  victims  easily  obtained,  and  all  deities  of  the 
Egyptian  mythology.! 

Offerings  of  the  other  class  consisted  of  what  our 
version  calls  "Meat  Offerings,"  viz.  corn  not  ground, 
meal,  or  bread  prepared  in  three  different  ways ;  t  or  of 
libations  of  wine.§'  Salt  was  also  to  be  mixed  with  the 
Meat  Offerings  in  every  instance, ||  and  oil  in  all  but 
two.H  Frankincense  was  largely  used,**  and  leaven 
and  honey  were  forbidden.ft  In  every  instance,  for 
the  greater  decency's  sake,  the  best  quality  of  whatever 
was  to  be  used  in  sacrifice  was  required.  J  J 

*  Lev.  i.  14;  xiv.  22.  t  i-  2,  3, 10.  }  ii.  1  - 16. 

§  Ex.  xxix.  40 ;  Lev.  xxiii.  13.  ||  Lev.  ii  13. 

^  il  1,  4,  7,  15,  &c. ;  v.  11 ;  Numb.  v.  15.  The  omission  of  oil  as  well 
as  frankincense,  in  the  case  specified  in  v.  11,  was  an  indulgence  to  the 
poverty  of  the  worshipper. 

••  ii.  1,  15.  tt  ii.  11. 

tt  E.  g.  «  A  male  withont  blemish,"  i.  3,  10.  «  Fine  flour,"  ii.  1,  5,  7. 
, — The  discrimination  between  different  kinds  of  cakes  is,  I  suppose,  to  be 
understood  merely  in  reference  to  the  convenience  of  the  worshipper. 
He  was  permitted  to  present  whichever  kind  he  was  accustomed  to  pre- 
pare.—  Respecting  the  injunction  to  use  salt  in  every  instance,  we  obtain 
light  from  verse  13,  where  it  is  called  nna  hSq,  "salt  of  the  cove- 
nant" Anciently  the  use  of  salt  together,  by  any  two  parties,  was  a  token 
of  friendship,  and  sanction  of  an  agreement  between  them ;  and  the  practice 
still  prevails  in  the  East.  (For  authorities,  see  Sykes's  '♦Essay  on  Sacri- 
fices," page  91).  The  worshipper  was  thus  reminded,  at  every  sacrifice, 
of  the  covenant  relation  in  which  he  stood  to  God.  Compare  Numb, 
xviii.  19 ;  2  Chron.  xiii,  5.  —  Oil  perhaps  was  to  be  used  to  make  that 
part  of  the  offering,  which  was  burnt,  consume  the  better.  The  use  of 
wine  and  oil  in  the  sacred  and  festive  rites  is  urged  by  Michaelis,  ("  Com- 
mentaries "  &.C.,  book  4,  chap.  3,  part  2,)  as  having  been  intended  to  wean 
the  Israelites  from  Egypt,  which  did  not  furnish  those  products  in  any 
abundance,  and  attach  them  to  Palestine,  of  which  they  were  staple 
commodities.  —  "Frankincense,"  says  M&imonides,  (More Nebochim, pars. 
3,  cap.  46,  p.  482,)  "  was  employed  on  account  of  the  agreeableness  of  its 
odor,  where  there  was  a  stench  from  burning  flesh." — Leaven,  (probably 
on  account  of  the  process  of  its  production,  viz.  fermentation,  which  is  a 


XL]  LEVITICUS  I.   1.  — IX.  24.  243 

2.  Of  offerings,<!onsidered  in  relation  to  their  manner 
and  object,  three  principal  kinds  are  distinguished  ; 
Burnt  Offerings ;  Sin  and  Trespass  Offerings  ;  and 
Feast,  or,  as  they  are  called  in  our  version.  Peace 
OfTerings.  The  first  and  last  of  these  kinds  were  dis- 
tinguished from  more  ancient  times.*  Sin  and  Tres- 
pass Offerings,  for  aught  we  know  to  the  contrary,  were 
an  original  institution  of  the  Law. 

The  Burnt  Offering,  or' Holocaust,  a  voluntary  service, 
in  most  instances,  might  be  of  a  quadruped,  or  of  birds, 
at  the  worshipper's  option.  In  the  former  case,  the 
victim  was  to  be  "a  male  without  blemish,"  "of  the 
herd  or  of  the  flock  " ;  that  is,  a  bullock,  a  he-goat,  or 
a  ram.  Beasts  were  to  be  immolated  on  the  north  side 
of  the  altar,  and  birds  on  the  eastern  side,  towards  the 
gate ;  arrangements  which  probably  tended  to  no  other 
use  than  the  convenience  of  the  officiating  priests.  All 
of  the  former  was  to  be  consumed,  except  the  skin,  and 
of  the  latter,  except  the  crop  and  feathers.f 

The  Burnt  Offering  is  habitually  spoken  of  by  the 
commentators,  as  having,  like  the  Sin  and  Trespass 
Offering,  an  expiatory  import.  But  this  view,  I  sup- 
pose, rests  on  no  better  authority  than  that  of  some 
texts,  which  represent  it  as  "  making  atonement " ;  J  an 
expression,  which  by  no  means  conveys  unequivocally 
the  sense  supposed ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  may  well  be 
understood  to  apply  to  a  solemn  act  of  devotion,  by 

kind  of  putridity,)  appears  to  have  anciently  suggested  the  idea  of  cor- 
ruption, and  therefore  to  have  been  excluded  from  religious  offerings, 
/here  all  ought  to  be  pure.  See  Matthew  xvi.  6 ;  1  Cor.  v.  6-8.  —  To 
orbid  honey  was  to  make  a  marked  distinction  between  the  Jewish  and 
'  eathen  offerings,  in  which  latter  it  was  very  freely  used.  See  Spencer, 
-  De  Legibus,"  &c.  lib.  2,  cap.  9,  §  2. 

*  See  Ex.  xx.  24  ;  xxiv.  5 ;  xxxii.  6. 

t  Lev.  i.  1  - 17.  Some  understand  differently  the  provision  last  mention- 
ed above,  reading,  in  verse  16,  "  the  intestines  and  their  contents." 

t  E.  g.  i.  4. 


244  LEVITICUS  I.   1— IX.  24.  [LECT. 

which  a  suppliant  seeks  the  Divine  favor  in  any  posture 
of  his  mind.  I  understand  the  distinction  of  the  Burnt 
Offering  to  consist  in  this ;  that  it  was  the  most  pomp- 
ous, solemn,  and  costly  of  the  different  forms  of  sacri- 
fice. No  valuable  part  of  the  victim  was  withheld  for 
any  use  of  the  worshipper  or  of  the  priest.  The  gift 
to  the  Deity  was  made  without  reservation.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Law  was  not  unreasonably  exacting. 
It  knew  nothing,  for  instance,  of  a  sacrifice  of  heca- 
tombs. 

^t   The  Burnt  Offering,  the  most  imposmg  form  of  the 
Jewish  ritud  of  sacrifice,  was,  from  its  costliness,  only 
within  the  reach  of  the  opulent.    But  the  considerate 
and  benignant  spirit' of  the  Law  did  not  design,  that  the 
poor  devotee  should  be  mortified  and  discouraged  by 
inability  to  present  a  tribute  of  similar  import.     To  this 
end  I  conceive  it  was,  that  the  arrangement  for  what 
are  called  Meat  Offerings  was   made.      The   humble 
worshipper,  who,  under  any  circumstances  of  experi- 
ence or  feeling,  found  himself  impelled  to  present  his 
tribute  of  devotion  at  the  temple,  was  invited  to  do  so 
in  a  way  corresponding  with  his  means ;  at  the  same 
time  that,  being  in  a  way  not  capable  of  operating  as  a 
pecuniary  mulct,  or  serving  purposes  of  hospitality,  it 
was  not  suitable  (as  we  shall  presently  see)  to  be  em- 
ployed for  Feast  Offerings  or  Sin  Offerings.     It  was, 
however,  accepted  as  the  Sm  Offering  of  the  extremely 
indigent.*    While  in  the  Burnt  Offering,  the  whole  vic- 
tim was  consumed,  except  the  skin,  which  was  the 
officiating  priest's  reward  for  the  fulfilment  of  his  func- 
tion,t  of  the  Meat  Offering,  on  the  contrary,  only  a 
small  portion  was  to  be  burned ;  the  rest  belonged  to 
the  priest,  t    The  reason  of  this  readily  suggests  itself. 

•  Lev.  V.  11.  t  vii.  8.  t  u.  2,  3,  9, 10, 16. 


XI.]  LEVITICUS  I.  1— IX.  24.  245 

The  whole  offering  was  of  so  little  value,  that  the  cu- 
pidity of  the  priest,  unless  a  large  portion  of  it  was  to 
remain  his  own,  would  too  often  have  frustrated  the 
worshipper's  pious  purpose,  sending  him  away  from  the 
sacred  precincts  with  his  errand  unaccomplished. 

One  cannot  but  remark  the  admirably  considerate 
and  condescending  spirit  of  the  Law,  as  exhibited  in 
this  instance.  It  would  have  no  man,  however  humble, 
excluded  from  the  pleasures  and  benefits  of  devotional 
observance.  While  it  summoned  the  affluent  to  bring 
of  their  abundance,  to  give  an  imposing  character  to  the 
service  of  the  Most  High,  it  invited  the  poorest  too  to 
bring  an  offering,  proportioned  to  his  means,  though  it 
were  but  a  barley  cake,  or  a  measure  of  parched  grains 
of  maize,  and  assured  him  that  his  tribute,  presented 
in  a  becoming  spirit,  was  no  less  acceptable  in  the  sight 
of  him,  who  "is  no  respecter  of  persons."  Still  more 
effectually  to  prevent  his  being  disturbed  by  the  mean- 
ness of  his  oblation,  even  the  high  priest,  with  all  the 
resources  of  his  exalted  station,  was  to  present,  morning 
and  evening,  a  Meat  Offering,  on  the  very  days  of  his 
consecration,  thus  adopting  for  himself,  to  do  it  honor, 
the  offering  of  the  poor.* 

The  subject  of  Peace  Offerings  is  treated  in  the 
third  chapter.  This  name  is  rather  a  literal  translation 
of  the  correspondmg  Hebrew  word,  than  a  just  and 
significant  description  of  the  kind  of  sacrifices  for  which 
it  was  used.  The  Septuagint  calls  them  "  Rescue  "  or 
"  Safety  Offerings."  f  "  Thank  Offerings  "  they  are  some- 
times termed.  Michaelis  denominates  them  "Feast  Of- 
ferings," and  this  phrase  has  the  advantage  of  conveying 
a  good  intimation  of  the  distinctive  manner  of  their  ob- 
servance. In  Feast  Offerings,  the  benevolent,  humanizmg 

*  Lev.  vi.  19-23;  ix.  4, 17.  f  Qurlat  tmrtifi»u. 


«      . 
246  LEVITICUS   I.   l.-IX.  24.  [LECT. 

(shall  I  say,  sociable  ?)  spirit  of  the  Jewish  Law  was  most 
clearly  manifested.  The  offering  might  be  of  an  ox, 
a  sheep,  or  a  goat,  and  these  either  male  or  female.* 
The  offerer  having  laid  his  hand,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Holocaust,  on  the  victim's  head,  thus  intimating  that  he 
manumitted  it,  when  he  gave  it  to  God,  it  was  slaughter- 
ed by  the  priest,  or  under  his  direction,!  **  at  the  door 
of  the  tabernacle  of  the  congregation,"  that  is,  m  the 
eastern  area  of  the  tabernacle  court.  The  altar  was 
then  sprinkled  with  some  of  its  blood,  and  a  small  por- 
tion of  the  carcass,  consisting  mostly,  if  not  wholly,  of 
parts  unfit  for  food,  was  consumed.  This  was  all  of  the 
animal  which  was  put  to  a  specifically  sacred  use. 
The  rest  was  then  withdrawn,  to  be  devoted  to  the 
purposes  of  festive  hospitahty.  And,  in  respect  to  this 
employment  of  it,  the  worshipper  had  no  option.  He 
could  not,  with  a  churlish  parsimony,  take  it  home,  and 
make  it  last  as  long  as  might  be,  for  the  support  of  his 
family.  Having  given  from  it  to  the  officiating  priest  his 
prescribed  perquisite, t  he  was  bound  to  take  care  to 
have  all  the  rest  devoured  in  that  day,  or  the  following, 
accordingly  as  the  occasion  was  of  a  more  or  less  festive 
character.^  If,  by  accident,  there  remained  any  till  the 
third  day,  in  the  case  where  most  Uberty  was  given,  it 
was  then  to  be  burned,  and  so  lost  to  its  owner.  The 
consequence  unavoidably  was,  that  whoever  presented 
a  Feast  Offering,  kept  hospitality,  for  the  time,  invitmg 
in  relatives,  or  friends,  or  the  needy,  to  share  his  cheer. 

*  The  offering  was  to  be  so  divided,  that  small  birds  would  not  an- 
swer the  purpose. 

f  Who  slaughtered  the  victims,  at  this  time,  does  not  appear.  Very 
probably  it  was  the  offerer  himself,  though  this  cannot  be  shown  from  i.  5, 
where  it  might  be  said  that  the  verb  is  used  impersonally.  When  the 
ritual  was  further  elaborated,  this  duty  would  naturally  fall  to  the  Levites. 
Compare  2  Chron.  jcxx.  17 ;  xxxv.  10, 11. 

t  Lev.  vii.  28-34.  §  vii.  15-17. 


XI.]  LEVITICUS  I.   1.  — IX.  24.  247 

And  the  better  to  accomplish  this  object,  the  rule  went 
so  far  as  to  demand,  that  rich  cakes  should  also  be  pro- 
vided, to  add  to  the  attractiveness  of  the  repast.* 

For   Sin  and  Trespass   Offerings,  which  make  the 
subject  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  chapters,  and  part  of  the 
sixth,  the  victim  was  to  be,  in  different  cases,  male  or 
female ;  but  in  either  case,  for  the  sake  of  attaching  all 
venerable  associations  to  the  rite,  it  must  be,  as  in  Burnt 
and  Peace  Offerings,  free  from  any  bodily  defect     It  is 
needless  to  urge,  that  a  lame  or  blind  animal,  which 
would  have  excited  ridicule  or  contempt  on  the  part  of 
spectators,  was  unfit  for  the  use  in  question.     In  Sin 
OfferingSj  the  value  of  the  victim  was  proportioned  to  » 
the  dignity  of  the  offerer.     For  a  Sin  Offering  of  the 
whole  people,  or  of  a  priest,  a  bullock  was  sacrificed ; 
for  that  of  a  ruler,  a  he-goat ;  and  for  that  of  a  common 
citizen,  a  female  of  the  same  animal.t     In  Trespass 
Offerings,  the  same  distinction  is  not  observed  ;  but  the 
circumstances  of  the  suppliant  are  alone  considered.     If 
rich  enough,  he  is  to  present  a  female  lamb  or  kid ;  if 
too  poor  to  afford  one  of  these,  then  two  turtle-doves, 
or,  more  penuriously  still,  two  young  pigeons,  or,  if  not 
equal  to  so  much  as  this,  then  the  tenth  part  of  an  ephah 
of  flour.J     Of  the  victim  dedicated  by  a  priest  for  a 
Sin  Offering,  the  whole  is  to  be  burned,  part  on  the 
altar  of  Burnt  Offermg,  part  by  the  heap  of  ashes,  which 
has  been  collected  without  the  camp,  so  that  no  portion 
shall  remam,  for  his  use,  of  the  animal  which  his  own 
fault  has  occasioned  to  be  sacrificed.    And  the  same 
course  is  to  be  taken  with  a  Sin  Offering  for  the  whole 
congregation,  to  the  end  that  the  priest  may  have  in  no 
degree  his  personal  interest  advanced  by  any  public 
sin.§     The  silence  which  is  observed  respecting  any 

«  Lev.  viL  12, 13.  t  iv.  3,  4, 13, 14,  22,  23, 27,  28. 

t  V.  6,7,11.  §  iv.  10-12,  19-21. 


248  LEVITICUS  I.  1.  — IX.  34.  [LECT. 

such  course,  when  the  Sin  Offering  presented  is  for  a 
ruler  or  a  common  citizen,  is  explained,  when  we  come 
to  read,  that  all  of  Sin  and  Trespass  Offerings,  which  is 
not  expressly  directed  to  be  burned,  is  to  be  a  perquisite 
of  th&  priests  ;  *  a  circumstance,  let  me  remark,  which 
could  not  have  failed  to  have  an  mfluence,  useful  to  the 
public,  (if  not  acting  through  a  personal  motive  of  the 
most  elevated  kind,)  in  making  the  priesthood  vigilant 
for  the  detection  of  crimes,  and  assiduous  in  exhorting 
offenders  to  take  the  appointed  steps  for  the  expression 
of  their  penitence. 

The  female  lamb  or  kid  of  Trespass  Offerings,  was 
♦  to  be  treated  in  the  same  manner  as  the  same  animal  in 
Sin  Offerings.!  If  two  turtle-doves,  or  two  pigeons  w^ere 
presented  mstead,  one  was  to  be  burned  whole,  the  other, 
when  cleansed  from  its  blood,  appears  to  have  belonged 
to  the  priest.  J  If  a  Meat  Offering  were  brought  for  the 
purpose,  again  all  was  his,  except  one  handful  which  he 
burned.^  Thus  Sin  and  Trespass,  like  Burnt  Offerings, 
were  "  most  holy  " ;  an  expression  which  means  that  no 
part  of  them  belonged,  as  part  of  Peace  Offerings  did, 
to  the  worshipper. 

The  distinction  between  Sin  and  Trespass  Offerings, 
though  as  definitively  presented  and  carefully  preserved 
in  the  original  as  m  our  version,  has  not,  as  far  as  I  know, 
been  satisfactorily  pointed  out  by  any  commentator. 
That  which  is  made  by  MichaeUs,  viz.  that  Sin  Offerings 
were  presented  for  offences  of  commission,  and  Trespass 
Offerings  for  those  of  omission,  has,  of  late,  perhaps, 
been  most  approved.     But  I  think  it  will  not  bear 

*  Lev.  vii.  6,  7.  f  v.  6.  J  v.  9, 10  ;  vL  26 ;  vii.  7. 

§  V.  ]2, 13.  "The  priest  shall  take  Ms  handful  of  it,  even  a  memorial 
thereof,  and  bum  it  on  the  altar."  The  handful  was  a  memorial  in  the 
sense  of  a  memento,  a  recognition  of  it,  as  having. been  offered  for  a 
sacred  use. 


XL]  LEVITICUS  I.   1.  — IX.  24.  249 

examination  ;  for  some  offences  mentioned  among  tres- 
passes* are  as  much  of  a  positive  nature,  as  any  of 
the  transgressions  indicated  in  a  general  way  as  requir- 
ing to  be  expiated  by  Sin  Offerings,  and  the  very  occa- 
sion of  a  Trespass  Offering  is  described  in  the  language 
which  most  strictly  applies  to  a  positive  violation  of 
law.f  Nor  can  we  make  the  distinction  consist  in  the 
offence  having  been  committed  unawares  in  the  one  case, 
aiid  not  in  the  other ;  for  if  the  person,  bound  to  present 
a  Sin  Offering,  is  uniformly  described  as  one  who  has 
"  sinned  through  ignorance,"  the  same  too  is  the  charac- 
ter of  transgressions  mentioned  in  connexion  with  Tres- 
pass Offerings. J  This  only  is  manifest;  that,  as  the 
word  rendered  "  sin,"  is  of  stronger  sense  than  that 
translated  "  trespass,"  so  the  sacrifice  in  the  former  case 
was  more  costly,  in  other  words,  the  virtual  penalty  was 
heavier,  than  in  the  latter ;  and  that  in  some  instances, 
at  least,  of  the  latter  case,  provision  is  made  for  indem- 
nity to  one  who  has  been  wronged  by  the  trespasser, 
of  which  we  see  no  appearance  in  the  former.^  In 
view  of  these  two  circumstances,  I  suggest  the  follow- 
ing hypothesis ;  that  it  was  discretionary  with  the  priest, 
having  looked  at  the  aggravating  or  mitigating  circum- 
stances of  an  offence  which  had  been  committed,  and 
perhaps,  too,  at  the  personal  circumstances  of  the  per- 
petrator, to  class  it  with  Sins  or  Trespasses,  and 
demand  a  sacrifice  to  be  presented  accordingly.  Of- 
fences,  abstractly  of  different   degrees   of  criminaUty, 

*  See  Lev.  v.  2,  3. —  I  may  conveniently  remark  here  on  a  peculiar 
expression  which  occurs  in  this  context;  "if  a  soul  sin,  and  hear  the  voice 
of  swearing  [of  adjuration],  and  is  a  witness,  if  he  do  not  utter  it,"  &c. 
The  reference  is  to  the  Jewish  form  of  a  legal  oath,  which  was  an  adjura- 
tion hy  the  magistrate.     Compare  Prov.  xxix.  24,  Matthew  xxvi.  63. 

t  Lev.  v.  17-19.  tv.2,3, 15. 

§  See  v.  16,  which  relates  to  the  priest's  having  been  defrauded  in  his 
perquisite ;  vi.  5. 

VOL.    L  32 


260  LEVITICUS  1.   I.  — IX.  24.  [LECT. 

would  demand,  abstracdy,  to  be  punished  by  the  impo- 
sition of  heavier  or  lighter  burdens.  The  same  offence, 
in  the  same  person,  would  be  more  or  less  criminal, 
when  attended  with  different  accompaniments,  and 
would  demand  a  more  or  less  expensive  expiation. 
The  same  ofli'ence,  under  the  same  circumstances,  com- 
mitted by  different  persons,  would,  in  justice,  be  atoned 
for  at  greater  or  less  cost  ;  since  what  would  be  a 
heavy  fine  for  a  poor  man,  would  be  scarcely  felt  by 
his  opulent  neighbour.  And,  once  more,  I  am  inclined 
to  think,  that,  when  the  offence  was  one  which  admitted 
of  indemnity,  then  the  policy  of  the  law  was  to  account 
it  technically  a  Trespass,  and  so  treat  it  with  little  se- 
verity ;  since,  in  such  cases,  it  was  a  necessary  accom- 
paniment of  the  offering,  (without  which,  the  worship- 
per obtained  no  reconciliation,)  to  make  compensation 
to  whomsoever  he  had  injured,  adding  an  amount  equal 
to  a  fifth  part  of  what  he  had  fraudulently  taken  or 
withheld,  in  order  to  indemnify  the  injured  for  his  trouble 
and  anxiety,  and  be  a  discouragement  to  himself  fi-om 
the  repetition  of  the  offence. 

The  excellent  uses  of  such  a  system  are  sufficiently 
manifest.     If  an  offence  were  committed  in  ignorance, 
the  offender,  it  is  true,  would  not  be  culpable,  except 
for  having  neglected  to  inform  himself  concerning  the 
character  of  his  act.     But  his  sin  done  unawares  might 
injure  his  neighbour  as  much  as  if  it  had  been  com- 
mitted against  light;  and  society  is  interested  in  pre- 
venting that  ignorance  of  the  law  among  its  members, 
which  allows  them  to  do  it  harm.     He  who  had  unin- 
tentionally transgressed  a  law,  then,  being  called  on, 
as  soon  as  he  came  to  know  the  illegality  of  what  had 
been  done,  to  put  himself-to  expense  because  of  it, 
found  himself  addressed  by  a  motive  to  avoid  such  a 
mistake  in  future ;  in  other  words,  to  acquaint  himself 


.«*" 


XI.]  LEVmCUS  1.  1— IX.  24.  251 

with  the  law.  The  presumptuous  offender  was  pun- 
ished, in  the  form  of  a  Sin  or  Trespass  Offering,  by  a 
fine,  by  which  he  "made  atonement,"  just  as  in  our 
day,  a  man  has  made  his  atonement,  or  his  reconcilia- 
tion, with  the  society  whose  laws  he  has  violated,  when 
he  has  served  out  the  time  of  his  sentence  in  prison,  or 
paid  the  prescribed  pecuniary  penalty.  To  a  man  who 
had  offended  without  detection,  except  by  his  own 
conscience,  the  system  would  have  an  admirable  appli- 
cation. It  would  never  suffer  his  conscience  to  sleep, 
till  he  had  informed  against  himself.  It  would  be  per- 
petually addressing  him  w-ith  the  offer  to  restore  him 
to  a  fair  standing,  and  to  self-respect,  as  soon  as  he 
would  come  forward,  avow  his  offence,  present  his  offer- 
ing, or  (to  phrase  it  differently)  pay  his  fine,  and  make 
restitution  to  those  whom  he  had  injured,  if  the  case 
was  such  as  to  admit  of  this  being  done.  And,  once 
more,  the  system  was  of  excellent  influence  in  putting 
the  legal  penalty  of  fine  in  the  form  of  a  religious  offer- 
ing. The  wrong-doer,  while  he  gave  satisfaction  to  the 
state,  and  paid  the  fine  of  his  delinquency,  was  thus 
reminded,  that  it  was  not  only  against  the  state  that  he 
had  offended,  and  was  at  the  same  time  made  to  ex- 
press the  penitence  of  his  heart  to  God. 

The  names  "  Wave  Offering,"  "  Heave  Offering,"  and 
the  like,*  apparently  adopted  from  more  ancient  use,  I 
understand  to  refer  merely  to  the  gestures,  by  which 
those  parts  of  the  victim  that  belonged  to  the  priest 
were  claimed  and  set  aside  by  him  for  his  own.  He 
lifted  and  waved  them  upwards,  to  denote  that,  in  a 
sense,  they  were  consecrated  to  God,  and  then  put 
them  by  as  the  appointed  portion  of  God's  ministers. 

In   all   offerings,   the   whole  of  animal  victims  was 

*  Ex.  xxix.  27;  Lev.  vii.  14,  34;  viii.  29;  x.  14. 


252  LEViTieus  i.  i.  — ix.  24.  [lect. 

burned,  except  the  portions  designed  for  food.  None 
was  thrown  aside,  to  putrefy  ;  and  especially  those 
parts  were  consumed,  which  might  have  served  the 
superstitions  of  diviners. 

Drink  Offerings,  of  which  litde  is  said,  do  not  appear, 
in  any  case,  to  have  been  presented  by  themselves.* 
Part  of  the  wine  brought  for  a  libation  was  probably 
poured  upon  the  head  of  a  victim,  or,  as  Josephus  says, 
merely  at  the  foot  of  the  altar.f  The  rest  may  have 
belonged  to  the  officiating  priest. 

3.  The  place  of  sacrifices  was  always  the  Altar  of 
Burnt  Offerings,  by  the  gate  of  the  Tabernacle.  This 
is  insisted  on  with  great  reiteration  and  emphasis. J 
And  the  leading  reasons  for  the  arrangement  occur  to 
the  mind  at  the  first  view.  Whatever  sacrifices  the 
law  allowed,  were  to  be  offered  to  Jehovah ;  and  how- 
ever right  might  be  the  previous  state  of  the  worship- 
per's mind,  they  would  not  have  their  full  effect  upon 
it,  unless  presented  at  the  place  where  his  peculiar 
presence  was  understood  to  reside,  and  surrounded  by 
all  the  moving  associations  of  that  spot.  Further ;  this 
rule  insured  that  whatever  sacrifice  was  offered  at  all, 
was  offered  under  responsible  public  superintendence, 
and  thus  prevented  the  very  act  of  devotion  from  being 
abused  to  idolatrous  uses.§    If  an  Israelite  might  sacri- 

*  E.  g.  Ex.  xxix.  40 ;  xxx.  9  ;  Lev.  xxiii.  13. 

f  Antiq.  lib.  3,  cap.  9,  §  4. 

I  E.  g.  L  3,  5 ;  xvii.  1-9.  Repeatedly,  as  in  these  passages,  directions 
are  given  to  "  sprinkle  the  blood  round  about  upon  the  altar  " ;  and  in  the 
Sin  Offerings  for  the  high  priest  and  the  congregation,  some  of  it  was 
to  be  put  "  upon  the  horns  of  the  Altar  of  Sweet  Incense,"  the  rest  to  be 
poured  "  at  the  bottom  of  the  Altar  of  Burnt  Offering."  iv.  7, 18.  Since 
blood  would  coagulate,  unless  used  when  fresh  and  warm,  such  provisions, 
whatever  other  import  they  may  have  had,  secured  the  point  of  place. 

§  xvii.  7.  The  word  "devils,"  here,  is  a  bad  translation,  that  term 
belonging  to  a  m3rthology  with  which  the  Jews  were  not  yet  acquainted. 
-^^yiff  means  a  goat,  and  the  reference  is  to  the  goat-worship  of  Egypt, 
one  of  the  forms  of  its  idolatry.    Compare  Amos  v.  25,  26'. 


XL]  LEVITICUS   I.   1.  — IX.  24.  253 

fice  at  his  home  without  a  priest's  presence,  idolatry 
might  become  rife,  without  detection.  If  he  might  sacri- 
fice at  his  home  in  a  priest's  presence,  the  danger  would 
be  less,  but  still  it  would  be  serious ;  since  the  priesthood, 
in  different  parts  of  the  territory,  might  insensibly  run 
into  different  practices,  and  thus  the  unity,  and  so  the 
purity  and  interest,  of  the  national  worship  be  gradually 
impaired. 

The  necessity,  under  which  an  Israelite  was,  on  all 
occasions  of  formal  religious  duty,  to  repair  to  the  cen- 
tral spot  occupied  by  his  nation,  caused  a  circulation  of 
the  people,  which  brought  them  acquainted  with  one 
another,  made  every  individual  acquainted  with,  and 
concerned  for,  the  common  concerns,  and  in  every  way 
tended  to  cherish  the  sentiment  of  love  of  country. 

Could  an  Israelite  have ,  presented  his  offering  wher- 
ever he  would,  there  would  have  been  no  security  for 
the  collection  of  the  sacred  revenue.  If  the  national 
worship  was  to  be  supported,  it  must  be  by  the  actual 
reception  of  the  revenues  designated  for  that  purpose. 
These  were,  in  great  part,  specified  portions  of  victims 
sacrificed,  which  would  be  liable  to  be  extensively  with- 
holden,  if  sacrifices  might  take  place  anywhere  but 
under  the  eye  of  him  to  whom,  or  to  whose  fraternity, 
the  proceeds  of  such  imposts  belonged. 

I  think  it  probable,  again,  that,  in  the  crowded  state 
in  which  the  Jews  were  hving  together  in  the  wilder- 
ness, the  rule  in  question  had  the  effect  of  a  health  law. 
The  flesh  and  offal  of  slaughtered  animals  might  breed 
a  pestilence,  if  not  disposed  of  with  proper  care,  such 
as  the  priest  was  required  to  exercise.* 

*  An  Israelite  might  eat  animal  food  at  other  places  than  the  Taberna- 
cle. But  it  was  not  till  the  people  were  going  into  Palestine,  and  were 
no  longer  to  live  in  a  crowded  camp,  —  in  short,  till  the  danger  just  re- 
ferred to  was  over,  and  other  reasons  for  the  prohibition  were  less  urgent, 


254  LEVITICUS   I.   L  — IX.  34.  [LECT. 

Once  more ;  the  rule  had  obviously  the  all-important 
effect  of  preserving  the  unity  and  integrity  of  the  nation. 
In  the  care  of  their  flocks  and  herds,  there  can  be  no 
reasonable  doubt  that  the  Israelites  often  wandered  far 
from  the  central  camp.  It  was  of  the  first  consequence 
that  there  should  be  methods  of  occasionally  recalling 
them,  lest  the  nation  should  be  annihilated  by  disper- 
sion. The  roving  shepherd,  as  often  as  he  proposed  to 
perform  one  of  the  solemn  acts  of  devotion,  w-as  requir- 
ed to  appear  in  the  midst  of  his  brethren  for  the  pur- 
pose. On  his  distant  expedition,  he  might  taste  freely 
such  animal  food  as  the  chase  afforded,  but  as  often  as 
he  desired  to  vary  his  diet,  or  enjoy  more  sumptuous 
fare,  he  was  drawn  back  to  the  central  spot  of  the 
people's  temporary  occupation.  And,  I  add,  that,  as 
the  camp  itself  was  shifting  its  place  from  time  to  time, 
such  arrangements  were  the  more  necessary,  both  to 
keep  the  citizens  within  reach  of  its  protection,  and 
to  prevent  them  from  losing  its  track. 

The  last  three  quarters  of  the  sixth  chapter,  and  al- 
most the  whole  of  the  seventh,  relate  to  the  sacrificial 
ritual,  and  comprehend  particulars,  which,  for  the  most 
part,  have  already  come  under  our  notice  in  the  earlier 
portion  of  this  Lecture,  in  connexion  with  the  different 
kinds  of  offerings.*     We  have  not  yet  arrived  at  that 

that  they  were  permitted  to  eat  tame  meat  at  their  homes.  (Compare  Lev. 
xvii.  3,  4;  Deut  xii.  15,  20-22.)  The  animal  food,  which,  from  the  first, 
they  might  eat,  while  absent  from  the  Tabernacle,  was  game ;  wild-meat, 
"  the  roe-buck,  and  the  hart " ;  and  this  was  food  jvhich  they  would  only 
make  use  of  on  hunting  excursions; — that  is,  when,  being  out  of  the  way 
of  a  crowd,  no  one  could  be  harmed  by  their  carelessness.  And  wild 
animals  were  never  used  in  sacrifices. 

•  The  division  between  the  fifth  and  sixth  chapters  is  not  the  same  in 
the  English  as  in  the  Hebrew.  But  here,  as  in  other  cases  of  such  differ- 
ence, my  references  are  made  to  the  English,  for  the  convenience  of  the 
general  reader.  —  The  provisions  in  Lev.  vi.  28,  and  vii.  22-27,  connect 
themselves  with  subjects  of  the  next  Lecture. — vii.  13,  is  no  contradiction 


XI. J  LEVITICUS   I.   1.  — LX.   24.  256 

part  of  the  Law,  which  made  complete  and  perma- 
nent arrangements  for  the  support  of  the  sacerdotal 
order.  But  it  may  be  well  here  to  observe,  that  the 
system  only  grew  up  by  degrees  to  its  final  wholeness, 
or  at  least  was  communicated  gradually  to  the  people, 
and  that  we  have  already  read  of  some  of  the  sources 
of  the  sacred  revenue.  The  priests  were  to  have  a 
present  from  the  first-fruits  after  harvest  and  vintage, 
the  quantity  being  probably  left  to  the  discretion  of  the 
giver,  and  thus  a  motive  addressed  to  them  to  execute 
their  office  in  a  conciliatory  manner.*.  They  were  to 
have  the  avails  of  fines  for  neglects  of  religious  ob- 
servances ;  a  circumstance  which  would  make  them 
watchful  to  detect  such  neglects.f  They  were  also  to 
have  the  skins  of  Burnt  Oiferings,  and  large  portions 
of  Feast,  Sin,  and  Trespass  Offerings,  respectively.^ 
And  most  of  these  they  were  directed  to  eat  without 
other  society,  and  only  "in  the  court  of  the  Taberna- 
cle of  the  Congregation,"  an  arrangement  which  secur- 
ed, both  that  they  should  be  on  terms  of  familiar  inter- 
course together,  and  that  they  should  only  enjoy  the 
fees  of  office  while  actually  present  for  the  execution 
of  its  duties.^ 

to  what  has  been  said  of  the  exclusion  of  leaven  from  offerings.  In  the 
offering,  strictly  so  called,  unleavened  cakes  were  used.  Those  prepared 
with  leaven  belonged  to  the  provision  made  in  Feast  Offerings  for  hospi- 
tality. 

*  These  did  not  make  a  proper  offering,  as  no  part  of  them  was  to  be 
burned.  Lev.  ii.  12. 

t  v.  14-16. 

I  Some  Meat  Offerings  were  to  be  thrown  into  a  common  stock.  viL  10. 
Others,  with  the  avails  of  Burnt,  Sin,  and  Trespass  Offerings,  belonged  to 
the  individual  priest  officiating,  vi.  26  ;  vii.  7,  8,  9.  The  same  was  true  in 
respect  to  Peace  Offerings,  (vii.  14,  33,)  unless  the  omission  of  an  explicit 
statement  in  vii.  30,  31,  should  lead  us  to  suppose,  that  the  Wave-Breast 
was  distinguished  in  this  respect  from  the  Heave-Shoulder. 

§  vi.  16,  18,  26,  27,  29 ;  vii.  6.  On  account  of  the  peculiar  character 
and  object  of  Feast  Offerings,  the  rule  in  respect  to  these  was  different. 


256  LEVITICUS  I.  1.  — IX.  84.  [LECT. 

After  the  institution  of  Aaron  in  the  pontificate,  Moses 
would  have  had  no  right  to  assume  any  sacerdotal  func- 
tion ;  on  the  contrary,  I  suppose  that,  with  all  his 
dignity,  he  would  then  have  been  chargeable  with 
the  same  offence  for  which  Saul  and  Uzziah  were  in 
later  times  so  severely  blamed  and  punished.  But  it 
belonged  to  him,  through  whom  the  Divine  Being  made 
his  communications,  to  induct  Aaron  into  the  station 
which  afterwards  no  man  might  invade,  and  to  guard 
against  all  future  mistake  by  exhibiting  to  his  view,  as 
well  as  explaining  to  him  in  words,  the  proper  manner 
of  performing  his  sacrificial  duties.  Accordingly,  on  the 
first  day  of  the  week,  during  which  the  solemnities  of 
Aaron's  inauguration  lasted,  we  find  Moses  going  through 
the  forms  of  the  sacrificial  ritual,*  when  he  had  first 
bathed,  clothed,  and  anointed  Aaron  and  his  sons,t 
after  the  manner  prescribed  in  the  twenty-ninth  and 
fortieth  chapters  of  Exodus. 

For   the   sake  of  greater  pomp,   and  of  giving  to 

the  priests  a  greater  familiarity  with  their  duties,  and 

perhaps  also  to  exhibit  these  first  observances  of  the 

ritual  to  a  larger  number  of  the  nation,  the  same  cere- 

ft 

The  priest  might  take  his  share  of  them  to  any  "  clean  place,"  and  admit 
the  female  members  of  his  family  to  the  repast,  Lev.  x.  1 4. 

•  viii  14-29.  The  precise  time  of  the  consecration  week  is  not  re- 
corded. The  Tabernacle,  we  have  seen,  was  erected  on  the  first  day  of 
the  first  month.  If  we  suppose  the  rest  of  that  week  to  have  been  occu- 
pied in  promulgating  the  regulations  in  i.  -  vii.  the  consecration  week  be- 
gan on  the  eighth  day  of  the  month.  Accordingly,  it  ended  on  the  four- 
teenth; and,  on  this  scheme,  Aaron  assumed  his  trust  on  the  very  day,  on 
the  evening  df  which  the  first  Passover  was  to  be  killed.  This  view  pre- 
sents an  interesting  coincidence. 

\  viii.  6-13.  I  understand  10-12,  in  the  following  sense;  "Moses 
took  the  anointing  oil,  with  which  he  had  anointed  [literally,  and  he  had 
anointed]  the  Tabernacle  and  all  that  was  therein,  (compare  Ex.  xl.  9, 

Slc.) and  he  poured  of  that  same  anointing  oil  upon  Aaron's 

head,"  &c.    The  same  form  of  reference  to  an  incident  before  related, 
occurs  a  few  verses  further  on.    See  Lev.  viii.  30 ;  compare  12. 


XI.]  LEVITICUS   I.   1.  — IX.   24.  257 

monies  were  repeated  through  six  days  more.*  The 
eighth  and  last  da^  of  the  solemnities  having  arrived, 
Moses  calls  on  Aaron,  who  had  meanwhile  kept  "  the 
charge  of,  the  Lord,"  that  is,  retained  the  trust  of  the 
Tabernacle,  to  execute,  for  the  first  time,  his  pontifical 
functions,  in  the  presence  of  the  assembled  magistracy 
and  people.  Under  Moses'  direction,  the  new  high 
priest  first  immolated  a  calf  and  a  ram,  for  a  Sin  Offer- 
ing and  Burnt  Offering  for  himself,  and  then  brought, 
in  the  people's  behalf,  a  Sin  Offering  of  a  goat,  a  Burnt 
Offering  of  a  yearling  calf  and  lamb,  a  Meat  Offering, 
and  a  bullock  and  ram,  for  Feast  Offerings,  presenting 
to  the  people's  knowledge,  in  those  sacrifices,  and  the 
ceremonies  with  which  they  were  accompanied,  a  com- 
plete specimen  of  his  future  duties.  The  ceremonies 
of  that  momentous  day,  when  a  divinely  constituted 
priesthood  was  given  to  Israel,  being  finishec^,  "Aaron 
lifted  up  his  hand  towards  the  people,  and  blessed 
them,  and  came  down  from  offering  of  the  Sin  Offering, 
and  the  Burnt  Offering,  and  Peace  Offerings.  And 
Moses  and  Aaron  went  into  [father,  had  gone  to]  the 
Tabernacle  of  the  Congregation,  and  [now  they]  came 
out  and  blessed  the  people.  And  there  came  a  fire  out 
from  before  the  Lord,  and  consumed  upon  the  altar  the 
Burnt  Offering,  and  the  fat ;  which  when  all  the  peo- 
ple saw,  they  shouted,  and  fell  on  their  faces." 

It  satisfies  the  imagination  to  suppose,  that  here  was 
a  miraculous  confirmation  of  Aaron's  investiture,  by  the 
descent  of  fire  from  heaven  to  kindle  the  flame  on  the 

*  Lev.  viii.  31  -36 ;  compare  Ex.  xxix.  35-37.  By  "  all  the  congrega- 
tion," which  was  assembled  on  the  first  day,  it  is  natural  to  understand,  ac- 
cording to  an  exposition  before  given,  (see  p.  165,)  a  representation  of  all 
the  tribes.  One  may  conjecture,  that  on  each  of  the  six  following  days,  a 
larger  delegation,  from  two  tribes  on  each  day,  was  invited  to  witness 
the  proceedings.  —  In  verse  31  (compare  Ex.  xxix.  31)  hl^2  needs  not  to 
be  translated  "  boil " ;  it  signifies  to  cook,  in  general. 
VOL.  L  33 


258  LEVITICUS  I.  1.  — IX.  24.  [LECT. 

altar  where  he  was  thenceforward  to  minister ;  and 
certainly  the  acceptance  of  the  first  rightly  presented 
offering  seems  to  us  a  worthy  occasion  for  one  of  those 
miracles,  by  which  the  Mosaic  system  was  undoubtedly 
estabUshed.  But,  when  one  remembers,  that  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter,  and  several  preceding  verses  of  this, 
the  offerings  are  said  to  have  been  consumed  as  they 
were  prepared,  one  is  obliged  to  doubt,  whether  the 
historian  designed  to  declare  more,  than  that  the  people 
saw  and  owned  "  the  glory  of  the  Lord,"  as  manifested 
in  these  imposing  ceremonies ;  *  and  that,  when,  standing 
without  the  court,  where  they  could  not  discern  the 
altar  itself,  they  saw  the  flame  blaze  up  from  it,  from 
before  the  place  where  Jehovah  had  taken  up  his  abode, 
while  their  prophet  and  priest,  the  former  in  his  sim- 
plicity, the  latter  in  his  gorgeous  array,  presented  them- 
selves side  by  side  to  their  view,  the  enthusiasm,  which 
the  circumstances  of  the  occasion  might  well  excite, 
made  them  shout,  and  then  fall  prostrate  on  the  earth. 

*  Lev.  iz.  23 ;  compare  4,  6. 


XII.]  LEVITICUS  X.  1.  — XV.   33.  259 


LECTURE   XII. 

LEVITICUS   X.   1.  — XV.   3a 

Pate   of   Nadab    and    Abihu.  —  Jewish    Police    Laws.  —  Four 
Principal   Objects    contemplated   in 'these  Provisions,  —  To 

WITHHOLD  FROM  IdOLATROUS  PRACTICES,  —  To  PRESERVE  THE 
GENERAL  HeALTH, To  PROMOTE  CIVILIZATION, To  MAKE  RE- 
LIGIOUS Obligations  always  present  to  the  Mind.  —  Pro- 
hibited AND  permitted  Kinds  OF  Anislal  Food. — Prohibitions 
OF  the  Use  of  Blood  and  of  Fat. —  Cleanliness  in  respect 
to  Vessels.  —  Uncleanness  of  Persons.*— Precautions  aoaiwst 
Leprosy.  —  Leprosy  of  Garments  and  Houses. 

In.  the  first  chapter  of  this  passage,  we  have  an  ac- 
count of  a  miraculous  punishment  of  a  sacrilegious  vio- 
lation of  the  newly -established  ritual,  on  the  part  of 
those  whose  official  charge  it  was  to  maintain  its  sacred- 
ness.  It  needs  not  to  be  urged,  that  at  any  time  this 
would  have  been  a  serious  offence.  But  the  special 
importance  of  protecting  the  ceremonial  at  the  present 
juncture,  when  it  w^as  just  going  into  operation,  from 
any  thing  which  should  bring  it  into  disesteem,  fully 
explains  to  us  why  it  was,  that  the  occasion  demanded 
a  supernatural  interposition.  It  would  appear  from  what 
follows  in  close  connexion,  viz.  a  perpetual  prohibition 
to  the  priests  of  the  use  of  wine,  when  engaged  in  their 
official  functions,  that  it  was  in  a  state  of  intoxication, 
that  Nadab  and  Abihu,  Aaron's  two  oldest  sons,  had 
committed  this  desecration  of  the  ritual.* 

*  Lev.  X.  9-11.  —  The  offence  of  Nadab  and  Abihu  was  probably  that 
which  is  forbidden  in  the  first  clause  of  Ex.  xxx.  9 ;  compare  Ex.  xxx. 
34-37. 


260  LEVITICUS  X.  l.-XV.  33.  [LECT. 

"  There  went  out  fire  from  the  Lord,  and  devoured 
them."  The  supposition  that  this  fire  was  lightning, 
probable  in  itself,  is  confirmed  by  what  we  presently  after 
read,  of  the  clothes  of  Nadab  and  Abihu  remaining 
unconsumed.* 

The  occasion  gave  opportunity  to  Moses  to  enforce 
on  the  fether  and  brothers  of  the  dead  the  obligations 
of  public  duty,  as  linaiting  the  indulgence  of  private 
feeling.  Eleazar  and  Ithamar,  consecrated  as  they 
were  to  the  Divine  service,  were  not  t'o  adopt  the 
usual  signs  of  lamentation,  nor  so  much  as  to  suspend 
the  offices  in  which  the  calamity  found  them  engaged. 
Lest  a  relaxation  of  the  precision  of  the  ritual  on  any 
account,  at  this  early  time,  before  habit  had  made  it 
familiar,  should  be  looked  on  as  a  dispensation  for  future 
neghgence,  they  were  even  to  go  on,  and  finish  the 
feast,  which  made  a  part  of  the  present  ceremonial. 
To  the  deeper  feehngs  of  the  bereft  father  more  allow- 
ance was  shown.  The  goat  of  the  Sin  Offering,  instead 
of  being  partly  consumed,  and  part  reserved  for  use,  as 
was  directed,  had  been  wholly  consumed,  perhaps  be- 
cause, the  grief  of  the  distressed  family  not  permitting 
them  to  assemble  for  a  repast,  they  knew  no  better  way 
to  dispose  of  it.  Moses  remonstrated  with  Eleazar  and 
Ithamar  on  the  negligence ;  but  Aaron  said,  that,  after 
what  had  befallen,  he  had  no  heart  for  feasting,  and  he 
could  not  think  that  such  a  service  would  be  demanded 
or  accepted  by  the  Lord ;  "  and,  when  Moses  heard 
that,  he  was  content."  f 

*  Lev.  X.  2,  5.  —  In  verse  3, 1  understand  a  reference  to  Ex.  xix.  22. 

f  Nadab  and  Abihu  were  to  be  buried  in  their  pontifical  vestments  (Lev. 
X.  5),  costly  as  they  were,  because  they  had  been  defiled  by  the  touch  of 
dead  bodies,  and  still  more  by  the  sinful  act  of  the  wearers.  —  Our  transla- 
tion does  not  convey  the  true  sense  of  x.  16-18.  Nadab  and  Abihu  had 
been  overtaken  with  punishment  in  the  midst  of  their  function,  and  part 
of  what  had  been  left  undone  by  them  is  the  subject  of  the  direction  in 


XII.]  LEVITICUS   X.   I.  — XV.  33.  261 

We  have  now  arrived  at  a  series  of  diFections,  ex- 
tending through  five  chapters,  which  present  the  basis 
of  what  has  been  denominated  the  Private  PoHce  Law 
of  the  Jews.*  They  relate  to  impurities  of  food,  of 
other  things,  and  of  persons.  The  two  last-named 
classes  of  provisions,  diffez'ent  as  they  are  in  their  sub- 
jects, may  yet,  on  account  of  the  similar  relation  which 
they  bear  to  the  main  question,  be  most  conveniently 
treated  together.  .  ** 

I  have  called  these  provisions.  Police  Laws.  Some 
of  them  will  be  found  to  have  a  directly  religious  bear- 
ing, and  all  have  some  of  those  relations,  more  or  less 
immediate  and  perceptible,  with  the  gre.at  ultimate  ob- 
ject of  the  Jewish  Law,  which  were  the  subject  of  re- 
mark in  a  former  Lecture.f  But  he  who  should  under- 
take the  investigation  of  these  rules,  with  a  view  to  find 
in  them  all  some  direct  'connexion  with  the  individual's 
religious  duty  and  advancement,  would  place  himself  on 
a  track  of  inquiry  in  which  he  would  find  litde  satis- 
faction. 

Four  great  leading  objects,  not  now  to  speak  of 
others  more  miscellaneous,  will  be  owned  by  a  careful 
observer  to  have  been  contemplated,  and  wisely  pur- 
sued, in  this  system  of  minute  regulations. 

verse  12.  Also,  either  through  their  tnisconduct,  or,  as  I  have  suggested 
above,  in  consequence  of  their  death,  the  whole  of  the  goat  of  the  Sin 
Offering,  presented  the  day  before,  had  been  consumed  on  the  altar.  See 
Lev.  ix.  15;  compare  vi.  26.  It  was  not  with  this  Sin  Offering,  says  Moses, 
(x.  18,)  as  with  those  the  blood  of  which  ought  to  be  brought  within  the 
holy  place.  (See  iv.  17, 18.)  Of  them,  indeed,  no  part  is  to  be  reserved 
for  food  (see  p.  247) ;  but  as  to  this,  "  Ye  should  indeed  have  eaten  it  in 
the  holy  place,  as  I  commanded."  We  have  kept  on,  says  Aaron,  (verse 
19,)  with  our  duty  as  to  offering,  notwithstanding  what  has  befallen.  God 
would  hardly  insist  that  I  should  eat  too,  when  I  was  so  afflicted. 

*  The  name  is  given  by  Michaelis.  "Commentaries"  &c..  Book  4, 
chap.  4. 

+  See  pp.  169-  171. 


262  LEVITICUS  X.   1.  — XV.  33.  [LECT. 

1.  There  was  the  paramoimt  object  of  withdrawing 
and  withholding  the  people  from  idolatry  ;  an  object  to 
be  accomplished  both  by  direct  prohibition  of  practices 
belonging  or  leading  to  idol  worship,  and  by  regulations 
tending  to  break  up  all  social  intimacy  between  them 
and  idolaters,  such  as  should  give  opportunity  for  the 
exertion  on  them  of  hurtful  personal  influence.  The 
fitness  of  regulations  of  the  former  class  admits  no 
enforcing.  As  to  the  latter,  too,  it  is  plain,  that  intima- 
cies, which  would  expose  the  Jews  to  evil  solicitation, 
could  never  exist  between  them  and  others  with  whom 
they  could  not  reciprocate  the  offices  of  hospitality. 
From  persons  who  eat  and  drink  what  we  have  been 
taught  in  childhood  to  abhor,  we  are  likely  to  feel  a 
strong  alienation.  At  all  events,  the  man  at  whose 
table  we  may  not  sit,  nor  he  at  ours,  will  hardly  acquire 
a  strong  hold  on  our  minds.  Nothmg  more  than  then- 
difference  in  this  class  of  practices  tends  to  keep  nations 
apart.*  A  principle  so  simple,  so  easy  of  application, 
yet  so  sure  in  its  results,  has  not  failed  to  be  largely 
employed  in  the  system,  of  which  we  are  treating; 
and  the  object  had  in  view  is  expressly  declared.! 
We  read  of  at  least  one  instance,  in  which,  this  separat- 
ing wall  being  overleaped,  idolatry  actually  and  immedi- 
ately followed.!  And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  prescrip- 
tion of  a  diet,  which,  while  it  admitted  of  sufficient 
variety,  was  yet,  within  specified  limits,  the  same,  and 
the  observance  of  which  was  a  point  of  national  honor 
and  duty,  was  one  means  of  binding  the  Israelites  to- 
gether in  a  closer  union  and  sympathy. 

2.  Many  of  these  regulations  were  to  be  regarded  in 
a  different  point  of  view ;  that  of  Health  Laws.  The 
care  of  health  is,  unquestionably,  for  the  individual,  an 

*  Gen.  xliii.  32.  t  Lev.  xx.  25,  26.  \  Numb.  xxv.  2,  3. 


XII.]  LEVITICUS  X.  1.  — XV.  33.  263 

obligation  as  near  to  a  religious  duty,  as  any  which  is 
not  commonly  enforced  in  that  character.  But,  beside 
the  danger  of  neglecting  the  duty,  it  is  not  every  one, 
with  the  best  intentions,  who  knows  how  to  take  that 
care ;  and  the  legislator,  who  should  wisely  and  effec- 
tively direct  the  citizen  in  this  respect,  would  deserved- 
ly be  accounted  a  public  benefactor.  But  all  well- 
administered  communities  have  been  in  the  habit  of 
applying  their  legislation  to  cases  of  epidemic  and  con- 
tagious disease ;  and  it  is  with  these,  principally,  at  least, 
that  the  code  of  Moses  concerns  itself.  Further ;  the 
situation  of  the  people,  whom  he  was  ruling,  created  a 
peculiar  exigency  in  this  respect.  As  long  as  their 
wanderings  in  the  wilderness  lasted,  the  encampment 
was  not  only  in  the  condition  of  a  crowded  garrison, 
but  of  a  garrison  without  the  secure  shelter  which  per- 
manent habitations  afford.  The  most  exact  care  was 
necessary  to  escape  the  unwholesome  tendencies  of 
such  a  situation.  A  violent  epidemic  disease,  not 
arrested  at  its  beginning,  might  prove  the  extirpation  of 
the  race.  Nor  were  such  laws  merely  designed,  though 
they  were  pecuHarly  requisite,  for  immediate  security. 
For,  even  when  settled  in  Canaan,  the  Jews  were  still 
to  be  a  very  compact  population,  inhabiting  a  territory 
so  small  in  proportion  to  their  numbers,  that  every  man's 
care  of  what  would  affect  the  general  health  became  a 
matter  of  extreme  interest  to  the  rest.* 

3.  Habits  of  cleanliness,  independently  of  their  rela- 
tion to  physical  health,  have  a  very  intimate  connexion 
with  civihzation  of  manners,  and  refinement  of  mind ; 
and  herem,  I  apprehend,  we  are  to  remark  a  very  subtile, 

•  I  might  add,  that,  if  there  be  any  thing  in  national  tendencies,  the 
filth  which  one  sees  in  the  lanes  of  the  Jewish  Ghettos  in  the  cities  of 
Europe,  is  an  intimation  that  the  fathers  of  the  race  needed  to  be  sub- 
jects of  a  rigid  legislation  of  this  kind. 


264  LEVITICUS  X.  1.  — XV.  33.  [LECT. 

pervading,  and  efficient  influence  of  the  institutions  of 
Moses.  He  had  undertaken  the  management  of  a  peo- 
ple, who  had  their  self-respect  and  their  mutual  respect 
to  learn;  a  people,  who  had  been  slaves  longer  than 
the  Greeks  of  our  own  times  ;  who,  from  the  litde  that 
we  know  of  their  history,  between  the  time  of  Jacob 
and  the  Exodus,  appear  to  have  known  servitude  under 
some  of  its  circumstances  of  bitterest  aggravation,  and 
who,  from  what  we  see  of  their  conduct,  when  emanci- 
pated, seem  to  have  been  broken  down  to  a  miserable 
pusillanimity ;  a  people,  who  had  yet  to  be  taught  the 
spirit  and  the  forms  of  a^  generous  and  beneficial  social 
intercourse.  Accordingly,  the  legislation  of  Moses  con- 
descended to  the  task  of  first  instituting,  (in  many  par- 
ticulars,) and  then  maintaining,  the  decencies  of  daily 
life.  It  went  with  the  citizen  to  his  labor,  and  his  re- 
weation,  and  his  rest,  and  told  him  how  to  demean  hun- 
self  everywhere,  so  as  to  make  a  fit  part  of  the  one 
well-ordered  community.  If  any  reader  is  offended  at 
the  minuteness  with  which  this  is  done,  let  him  answer, 
whether  first  steps  are  not  indispensable  steps ;  whether 
any  other  can  follow,  till  these  have  preceded ;  whether, 
if  such  particulars  still  remained  unregulated,  as  the 
promulgation  of  the  laws  implies  to  have  so  remained, 
they  did  not  absolutely  require  regulation. 

Further;  uniformity  of  customs  is  a  necessary  pre- 
liminary to  a  complete  social  amalgamation ;  to  the 
mutual  good  understanding,  and  sympathy,  and  respect 
of  citizens  making  a  community  together.  And,  ac- 
cordingly, general  laws  of  the  kind  of  which  we  are 
speaking  were  important  to  the  individual,  not  only  in 
respect  to  the  formation  of  suitable  personal  habits, 
(which,  perhaps,  some  other  like  arrangements  might 
form  as  well,)  but  as  bringing  him  into  resemblance  to 
others.     And  this  leads  me  to  say,  that  should  we  find 


XII.]  LEVITICUS  X.   1— XV.  33.  265 

some  of  the  regulations  of  this  class  to  be  based  on 
what  is,  in  our  view,  no  better  than  an  arbitrary  connex- 
ion of  what  they  enjoin  with  essential  proprieties  of 
personal  observance  and  deportment,  this  is  no  objec- 
tion whatever  to  their  usefulness.  Many  such  things, 
no  doubt,  are  merely  conventional,  in  every  state  of  so- 
ciety. But  education,  and  habit,  and  common  consent, 
have  formed  a  close  association  between  them  and  deli- 
cacy of  mind  ;  so  that  he  who  neglects  them  defies 
and  revolts  others,  and  has  a  sense  of  grossness  on 
his  own  part,  as  real  as  if,  philosophically  considered^ 
his  act  had  much  more  of  that  character.  Refinement 
implies  a  degree  of  deference  even  to  others'  known 
prejudices,  when  those  prejudices  are  not  hurtful ;  still 
more,  to  the  exactions  of  a  judgment  or  taste,  which 
both  parties  understand  (even  though  it  should  be  erro- 
neously) to  have  a  good  foundation.  And  he  who 
would  lead  on  a  community  to  civilization,  can  by  no 
means  do  less  than  condemn  the  unnecessary  act, 
whatever  it  be,  which  that  community  is  agreed  in  ac- 
counting a  violation  of  decorum. 

4.  Once  more  ;  by  force  of  a  system  of  rules  of  the 
kind  we  are  considering,  religious  obligation  was  made 
to  be  a  subject  always  present  to  the  thoughts.  The 
habit  of  regarding  the  divine  will  in  whatever  is  done, 
is  the  distinctive  habit  of  the  religious  mind.  The  pre- 
cept to  Christians  is  given  in  more  general  terms, 
suitable  to  the  more  advanced  condition  of  those  to 
whom  it  was  addressed ;  "  Whether  ye  eat  or  drink,  or 
whatever  ye  do,  do  all  to  the  glory  of  God."  For  the 
Jew,  just  emerging  into  a  faint  consciousness  of  his 
religious  nature,  much  more  was  necessary  than  the 
mere  inculcation  of  an  abstract  principle ;  and  to  him 
the  Law,  which  followed  him  with  its  positive  discrimi- 
nations into  all  his  daily  business  and  enjoyments,  was 

VOL.    L  34 


266  LEVITICUS  X.  1.- XV.  33.  t^%  fXECT. 

a  constant  admonition  of  the  religious  relation .  in  which 
he  had  been  called  to  stand,  and  furnished  the  effectual 
discipline  for  the  higher  exercises  of  a  virtue,  which  owns 
Grod's  ever-present  inspection  and  authority,  and  sub- 
mits the  whole  hfe  to  his  direction.* 

From  these  preliminary  remarks,  I  proceed  to  some 
particular  statements  and  observations  upon  the  class 
of  rules  under  our  notice. 

The  eleventh  chapter,  which  introduces  the  subject 
of  ritual  impurities,  specifies  the  prohibited  and  the  per- 
mitted kinds  of  food.f  In  respect  to  this  distinction, 
we  are  carefully  to  bear  in  mind,  that  to  declare  an 
animal  to  be  clean  or  unclean,  was  merely  to  pronounce  it 
fit  or  unfit  to  be  eaten.J  There  was  nothing  contemptu- 
ous in  the  use  of  the  epithet  unclean,  in  this  connexion. 
The  horse  and  the  lion  were  unclean  animals.  Man 
was  the  most  unclean  of  all  creatures,  in  the  contempla- 
tion of  this  code ;  for  no  one  would  violate  it  in  so  odious 
a  manner,  as  a  cannibal. 

Again ;  it  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that 
unclean  animals  must  be  avoided.  Many  domestic 
animals  were  of  this  class ;  for  instance,  the  ass  and 
the  camel. 

A  clean  animal,  I  repeat  it,  was  an  animal  whose  flesh 
an  Israelite  might  lawfully  eat ;  an  unclean  animal,  one 
which  he  must  not  taste.  In  respect  to  this  distinction, 
the  directions  of  Moses  are  extremely  precise.     As  to 

*  So  says  Justin  Martyr,  almost  using  the  Apostle's  own  expression ; 

6(«/tutra»  riM>r  irixtritu   v'fir'tTK^t*  ifiuf,  7m  »«e<  It  t£  Mitsf  Mat  riuir  tr^  iffmX~ 

ftZy  ix^Tt  rit  &iif.    (Dialogus  cum  Tryphone,  p.  237.    Edit  Paris.)       - 

f  Aaron  having  now  been  inducted  into  his  office,  we  read  that  "the 
Lord  spake  unto  Moses  and  to  Aaron,"  (Lev.  xi.  1,)  instead  of  "  the  Lord 
spake  unto  Moses,"  simply  (iv.  1 ;  v.  14;  vi.  1,  8,  19,  24,  &c.) ;  and  this 
language  is  sometimes  afterwards  repeated,  where  directions  are  given, 
which  particularly  concern  the  priesthood  and  its  duties.  See,  e.  g.,  xiii. 
1 ;  XV.  1. 
X  xL.47. 


XII.]  LEVITICUS  X.   1  —  XV.  33.  267 

quadrupeds  and  fishes,  these  distinctions  are  entirely  in- 
telligible at  the  present  day,  being  made  in  the  way  of 
general  definitions  based  upon  familiar  facts  in  natural 
history.  All  ruminating  mammalia  are  clean,  if,  at  the 
same  time  they  have  feet  completely  cloven.  Beasts 
vi^anting  in  either  of  these  marks  are  unclean.*  Fishes, 
whether  of  river,  lake,  or  sea,  which  have  both  scales 
and  fins,  are  clean ;  none  others  are  so,  the  whole  class 
of  shell-fish  being  prohibited.!  The  distinction  in  re- 
spect to  birds  is,  on  the  other  hand,  given  in  a  particular 
enumeration  of  such  as  may  not  be  eaten.  J  This,  in 
the  disuse  of  the  Hebrew  language,  and  the  consequent 
uncertain  sense  of  many  of  the  terms,  has  occasioned 
to  the  later  Jews  much  perplexity  and  dispute ;  and  it 
is  the  opinion  of  some  of  the  best  critics,  that  in  respect 
to  important  particulars  of  domestic  economy,  their 
actual  practice  is  in  violation  of  their  law.  Winged 
insects,  with  four  exceptions,  designated  by  names,  the 
sense  of  which  is  uncertain,  are  unclean ;  §  as  are  also 
reptiles  of  all  the  three  kinds,  of  which  the  serpent,  the 
lizard,  and  the  centipede,  are  specimens.  || 

It  would  be  quite  unreasonable  to  expect,  that,  des- 
titute as  we  are  of  any  contemporaneous  comment,  we 
should  be  able,  at  this  distant  time,  fully  and  precisely 
to  explain  a  class  of  regulations,  having  reference  to  the 
tastes,  the  prejudices,  and  the  physical  well-being  of  a 
people  under  peculiar  circumstances,  and  to  those  habits 
of  private  life,  of  which  history  is  not  accustomed  to 
take  note.  It  is  probable  that  many  of  them  were  in- 
tended merely  to  promote  a  uniformity  of  domestic 
usages,  and  a  decency  of  manners,  according  to  the 
most  approved  standard  of  the  time  and  place.  A  re- 
mark which  has  been  made,  in  a  more  general  form, 

*  Lev.  xi.  2-  8,  26-28.  f  xL  9- 12.  t  xi.  13-19. 

§  xi.  20-25.  II  xi.  41-43. 


268  LEVITICUS  X.  1 XV.  33.  [LECT. 

holds  good  especially  in  respect  to  the  distinction  of 
practices  and  tastes  as  to  food.  In  their  origin,  they 
are  in  a  great  measure  arbitrary ;  but  they  constitute  a 
rule,  which  it  is  a  violation  of  good  sense  and  good 
manners,  and  of  one's  own  sense  of  propriety,  to  in- 
fringe. A  French  soldier  will  easily  eat  horse-flesh, 
and  would  eat  it  oftener  if  it  were  not  too  dear ;  a  thing, 
which  a  German  will  hardly  be  induced  in  any  emer- 
gency to  do.  The  thought  of  eating  frogs  and  snails 
disgusts  most  of  us  who  have  not  tasted  them.  They 
make,  however,  the  choice  and  costly  luxury  of  the 
Parisian  cuisinCf  the  best  in  the  world.  We  should 
loathe  the  sight  of  a  dog  upon  our  tables  ;  a  Sandwich 
islander  cannot  set  out  his  ceremonious  feast  without  it. 
The  rat  often  feeds  upon  the  best  of  our  granaries, 
while  we  keep  the  swine  for  our  scavenger;  yet  we 
could  not  endure  the  flesh  of  the  former,  while  that  of  the 
latter  is  reckoned  a  delicacy.  Now  whatever  might  have 
been  the  standard  in  this  respect,  to  which  old  custom, 
originating  in  whatever  accident,  had  given  an  approved 
authority  among  the  Israelites,  to  that  standard,  for  rea- 
sons which  have  been  urged,  it  was  a  legitimate  and 
important  object  of  the  Jewish  Law  to  enforce  a  uniform 
adherence.  If  the  eating,  for  instance,  of  camels  or 
hares,  of  mice  or  of  tortoises,  which  are  among  pro- 
hibited articles,  was,  according  to  the  best  current  senti- 
ment of  the  nation,  a  violation  of  delicacy  and  good 
breeding,  there  was  good  reason  why  a  legislator, 
who  aimed  at  the  equal  civilization  of  the  people, 
should  expressly  forbid  it  to  any  who  might  other- 
wise be  tempted  to  forfeit  their  self-respect  by  indulging 
appetite  at  the  expense  of  decorum. 

A  second  reason  of  these  laws,  and  perhaps  a  more 
manifestly  important  one,  —  upon  the  principles  of  which, 
however,  I  have  already  dwelt  at  sufficient  length,  — 


XII.]  LEVITICUS  X.  1.  — XV.  33.  269 

was  to  keep  the  Israelites  from  contamination  through 
social  intercourse  with  idolaters ;  a  reason  actually  an- 
nounced, as  was  before  remarked,  in  explicit  terms.* 
The  Egyptians  also  had  a  strict  code  of  rules  in  relation 
to  food  ;  and,  differing  as  it  did  widely  from  that  of 
Moses,  there  existed,  as  long  as  both  were  observed, 
an  impassable  barrier  between  the  two  communities.! 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Israelites  were  probably  re- 
strained from  intercourse  with  their  nearest  and  most 
dangerous  neighbours,  the  Canaanites,  by  the  interdict 
laid  on  dog's  flesh,!  as  they  were  from  intimacy  with  the 
descendants  of  Ishmael,  by  the  prohibition  of  the  flesh  of 
the  camel  and  the  hare,  the  former  of  which  (though  not 
known  to  us  like  the  latter)  is  said  to  afford  food  equally 
wholesome  and  palatable,  and  both  of  which  were  in 
common  use  with  those  tribes. 

Some  of  these  laws,  in  the  third  place,  clearly  had 
their  origin  in  reasons  of  dietetics.^  It  is  likely  that 
this  is  true  of  not  a  few,  concerning  which  it  cannot 
now  be  proved,  or  concerning  which  proper  investiga- 
tion has  not  been  made ;  for  diet  connects  itself  with 


*  Lev.  XX.  23-26.  Compare  xi.  45-47,  where  I  take  the  sense  of 
verse  45  to  be ;  By  these  observances  you  shall  keep  yourselves  a  peculiar 
subject  people  to  me,  as  I  am  a  peculiar  tutelary  divinity  to  you. 

f  For  some  particulars  of  the  Egyptian  law  on  this  head,  with  authori- 
ties, see  Spencer,  "  De  Legibus  "  &c.,  lib,  1,  cap.  5,  §  3.  The  Egyptians, 
for  instance,  ate  no  fish  whatever  ;  they  rejected  only  carnivorous  birds  ; 
and  their  distinction  between  quadrupeds  was  different  from  the  Jewish. 
For  various  citations  from  ancient  writers,  showing  that  this  system  of 
rules  actually  made  a  separation  between  the  Jews  and  other  nations,  see 
Spencer,  ibid.,  §  5. 

X  The  Carthaginians,  at  least,  ate  dog's  flesh,  as  Justin  (Hist.  Philip., 
lib.  19,  cap.  1)  relates  that  Darius  Nothus  summoned  them  to  desist  from 
this  practice,  among  others ;  and  it  is  probable  that  they  brought  the 
custom  from  Canaan,  the  cradle  of  their  race. 

§  It  is  natural  to  understand  such  declarations  as  those  in  Deut  vii.  12, 
15,  xxviii.  15,  27,  35,  60  -  62,  so  as  to  connect  them  with  the  class  of  laws 
now  before  us. 


270  *  LEVITICUS  X.  1— XV.  33.  [LECT. 

Other  habits  of  regimen,  and  with  climate,  in  such  a 
manner,  that  what  is  innocent  or  salutary  in  one  region, 
or  state  of  society,  would  be  noxious  in  another.  But 
it  can  hardly  be  questioned,  that  we  are  thus  to  account, 
in  part,  at  least,  for  one  important  provision ;  viz.  the 
prohibition  of  swine's  flesh.  All  accounts  agree,  that 
the  use  of  this  food  favors  the  spread  of  cutaneous  dis- 
orders, where  any  circumstances  of  predisposition  exist ; 
and  against  this  class  of  diseases  it  was  necessary  to 
use  all  precautions,  among  a  people  crowded  togeth- 
er like  the  Israelites,  and  accustomed  chiefly  to  the 
use  of  woollen  garments,  not  frequently  changed,  in- 
•^yStead  of  the  linen,  which  is  so  important  an  aid  to 
/  cleanliness  and  health,  in  our  different  state  of  society. 
Especially,  there  appears  to  be  no  doubt,  that  the  diet 
forbidden  favored  the  spread  of  the  leprosy,  a  disease 
which  is  presently  to  come  before  us  in  a  different  con- 
nexion, and  which  was  of  so  shocking  a  nature,  that 
too  severe  precautions  could  not  be  used  to  arrest  it.* 

Animals  dying  by  disease  were  not  to  be  eaten  by 
the  IsraeUtes,t  for  the  same  reason  probably  that  they 
are  rejected  by  ourselves;  that  is,  the  unwholesome 
condition  of  their  meat.  The  same  was  the  case  with 
animals  killed  by  other  animals,J  the  danger  here  had 
in  view  being  very  probably  that  of  hydrophobia,  the 
contagion  of  which  might  have  been  communicated 
^  by  a  rabid  dog,  fox,  wolf,  or  jackal.  But  it  would  seem 
that  both  these  provisions  were  rather  matters  of  indul- 
gence to  a  common  feeling,  than  of  essential  importance, 
or  at  least  that  the  danger  against  which  they  were  de- 

»  It  is  likely  also  that  this  rule  respecting^  swine's  flesh  had  a  relation 

to  that  partly  arbitrary  sense  of  propriety  and  refinement  of  wjiich  I  have 

spoken.    Herodotus  says  (lib.  2,  cap.  47)  that  the  Egyptians  (from  whom 

*C  tiie  Jews  must  have  chiefly  derived  their  notions  of  this  kind)  regarded 

this  animal  with  extreme  disgust 

t  Lev.  xi.  39,  40.  J  Ex.  xxii.  31. 


3»       t. 


XII.]  LEVITICUS  X.  1.  — XV.  33.  271 

signed  to  guard,  was  not  esteemed  considerable,  as  the 
penalty  of  their  violation  went  no  further  than  the  in- 
convenience of  bathing  one's  person,  and  washing  one's 
clothes,  and  remaining  apart  from  others  till  the  evening 
of  the  same  day.* 

The  use  of  blood  and  of  fat  for  food  was  forbidden  under 
all  circumstances  whatever;  the  prohibition  respecting  the 
former  being  urged  with  peculiar  strictness  and  reped- 
tion,  and  being  even  extended  to  strangers  sojourning 
within  the  realm  of  Israel.!  Its  reason  is  to  be  found 
in  the  fact,  that  the  eating,  or  rather  drinking  of  blood, 
was  a  custom  commonly  observed  among  the  Pagan 
nations  of  Asia,  in  their  sacrifices  to  idols,  and  in  the 
taking  of  oaths.t  Upon  the  other  prohibition  w^e  are 
able  to  obtain  less  light.  It  is  probable,  that  it  had  its 
origin  in  considerations  of  a  dietetical  character,  all  sorts 
of  gross  food  being,  like  swine's  flesh,  which  has  been 
already  mentioned,  unwholesome  for  a  people,  among 
whom  cutaneous  diseases  were  endemic. 

A  vessel,  into  which  dead  vermin  had  chanced  to  fall, 
became  unclean,  so  that  no  food  contained  m  it  could 
be  tasted.^     The  vessel  itself,  if  earthen,  was  to  be 

*  Lev.  xvii.  15.  t  iii  17 ;  viL  22-  27  ;  xvii.  10-14. 

X  See  this  point  largely  proved  by  Spencer,  "De  Legibus"  &c.,  lib.  2, 
cap.  11,  who  also  argues  (ibid.,  §  3),  that  the  eating  of  blood  connected 
itself  with  the  pretended  arts  of  magic  Compare  xix.  26.  Michaelis,  in 
his  "  Commentaries  "  &c.,  book  4,  chap.  4,  part  1,  §  5,  has  the  following  lan- 
guage ;  "This,  indeed,  Was  so  much  an  Asiatic,  and,  in  a  particular  manner, 
a  Phoenician  usage,  that  we  find  the  Roman  writers  taking  notice  of  it,  as 
something  outlandish  at  Rome,  and  peculiar  to  those  nations ;  and  as,  in 
the  Roman  persecutions,  the  Christians  were  compelled  to  bum  incense, 
so  were  they  in  the  Persian,  to  eat  blood."  This  is  entirely  to  the  point, 
but  one  wishes  that  he  had  given  his  authorities. 

§  xL  29  -  33.  The  kinds  of  vermin  by  which  dwellings  were  most  in- 
fested, and  by  contact  with  which,  vessels  would  be  made  unclean,  are 
specified  by  name.  They  had  before  been  themselves  proscribed  as  food 
imder  the  more  general  descriptions.  The  name  "  creeping  things," 
(D'V"JE?  )  is  shown  by  the  context  to  include  short-legged  animals. 


;• 


■m 


272  '         LEVITICUS  X.  1.  — XV.  33.  [LECT. 

broken,  and  if  of  other  materials,  was  to  be  carefully 
cleansed.*  In  the  latter  case,  the  water  used  in  cleans- 
ing the  defiled  vessel  became  unfit  for  any  other  use.t 
The  strictness  of  the  law  was  even  carried  to  that  ex- 
tent, that  whatever  might,  in  cooking,  come  in  contact 
with  a  vessel  used  to  contain  food,  was  itself  defiled  by 
the  touch  of  such  a  carcass ;  water  was  rendered  un- 
clean  by  it, '  except  in  a  running  stream,  where  any 
possible  taint  would  presently  be  conveyed  away  ;  and, 
for  the  greater  inducement  to  use  all  precautions  against 
the  multiplication  of  the  nuisance,  the  seed  which  had 
been  brought  by  the  husbandman  into  his  dwelling,  to 
be  there  immersed  in  water  for  use,  must  be  thrown 
away  if  the  same  casualty  had  befallen  it.  J 

In  respect  to  all  this  class  of  regulations,  I  will  say  no 
more,  than  that  the  rigid  observance  of  them,  which  the 
Law  was  careful  to  enforce,  was  manifestly  inconsistent 
with  irregular  and  slovenly  habits  of  mind,  as  well  as 
of  domestic  administration.  Let  us  imagine  a  filthy 
tribe  of  our  North  American  Indian  hunters  brought 
under  the  actual  government  of  such  a  code  of  rules, 
and  how  obvious  is  it,  that  their  savage  license  would 
be  by  that  very  act  abandoned,  and  a  new  character 
impressed  on  the  whole  current  of  their  lives,  and  fabric 
of  their  hitherto  dislocated  society.  In  the  state  of 
things  brought  about  by  such  rules,  if  suflSciently  ob- 
served, and  by  the  rest  of  the  code  of  which  they  make 
a  part,  "  the  life  of  man  "  could  hardly  be,  what  a  con- 

*  Compare  Lev.  vi.  28.  The  best  account,  which  occurs  to  me,  of  this 
distinction,  ie,  that  earthen  vessels  would  be  chiefly  in  use  among  the 
poorer  sort,  upon  whose  habits  of  neatness  less  dependence  could  be 
placed.  The  loss  of  an  earthen  vessel,  mean  though  it  was,  would  be 
considerable  to  them,  and  so,  for  fear  of  having  to  break  it,  they  would 
take  care  to  keep  it  covered  ;  while  the  more  careful  and  luxurious  habits 
of  such,  as  could  afford  more  costly  vessels,  made  a  less  severe  penalty 
necessary  in  their  case. 

t  xi.  34.  t  xi.  34-38. 


XII.]  LEVITICUS  X.   1.  — XV.   33.  273 

dition  of  social  derangement  has  been  described  as 
making  it,  "  solitary,  poor,  nasty,  brutish,  and  short."  * 

From  distinctions  between  what  was  pure  and  impure 
in  food,  we  come  to  similar  rules  relating  to  impurities 
of  other  things,  and  of  persons,  which  I  proposed  to 
treat  together.  I  premise  the  same  remark  concerning 
them,  as  concerning  the  laws  discriminating  between 
clean  and  unclean  food  ;  that  it  would  be  obviously 
unreasonable  to  expect  to  obtain  satisfaction  respecting 
the  purpose  of  all  their  provisions. 

An  unclean  person  was  one  who  must  not  touch,  nor 
be  touched  by  another  person.  To  be  ritually  unclean 
was  no  crime  and  no  disgrace.  A  physician,  who  touch- 
ed his  patient,  for  instance,  to  count  his  pulse,  became 
unclean  by  that  act.f  So  did  whoever  was  employed 
to  bury  a  dead  body ;  and  the  consequence  was  even 
incurred  by  serving  in  some  sacred  offices. t  But  to 
omit  the  duty  of  purification  according  to  the  prescribed 
ceremonial,  was  a  crime  of  serious  magnitude.^  Some 
acts  made  a  person  unclean,  and  condemned  him  to 
separation  from  others,  for  a  day  only;  others,  for  a 
w  eek ;  others,  for  a  longer  time. .  And  the  ceremonies 
of  purification  were,  in  different  cases,  more  or  less 
complicated  and  prolonged,  and  of  course  more  or  less 
inconvenient  and  costly ;  some  requiring  only  certain 
ablutions,  when  the  time  of  sequestration  had  expired ; 
others  demanding  appropriate  sacrifices  at  the  Taber- 
nacle, and  fees  to  the  priest.  He  who  touched  the  body 
of  an  unclean  animal,  for  example,  or  of  a  clean  animal 
which  had  died  a  natural  death,  became  unclean  till  the 
evening,  when  he  was  purified  by  merely  washing  his 
clothes ;  ||  while  a  woman,  after  parturition,  was  to  be 

*  Hobbes's  "  Leviathan,"  part  1,  chap.  13.  t  Lev.  xv.  7. 

t  xvi  26  -28 ;  Numb.  xix.  7-10.  §  Numb.  xix.  20. 

II  Lev.  v.  2  ;  xi.  27,  28,  39,  40. 

VOL.  I.  35 


274  LEVITICUS  X.   1.  — XV.  33.  [LECT. 

unclean  for  forty  days,  if  she  had  borne  a  son,  and  eighty 
•  days,  if  a  daughter,  and  at  the  end  of  her  time  of  re- 
tirement was  to  present  a  Burnt  Offering  and  a  Sin 
Offering  at  the  Tabernacle.* 

Without  undertaking  to  expound  the  spirit  and  intent 
of  all  these  laws,  where,  for  want  of  authenticated  facts 
sufficiently  numerous  and  precise,  there  is  so  much 
temptation  to  conjecture,  it  is  plain,  that  rules  of  this 
class  were  suited  to  accompUsh,  in  general,  two  objects. 
In  the  first  place,  where  substantial  injury  was  threaten- 
ed by  the  contact  or  presence  of  an  insalubrious  object, 
the  mischief  was  guarded  against  by  positive  statute 
regulation,  enforced  by  the  urgent  power  of  religious 
sanctions.  In  the  second,  where  mere  transgressions  of 
decorum,  a  thing  which  opinion  regulates,  were  had  in 
view,  it  is  probable  that  the  inconvenience  of  the  condi- 
tion incurred,  though  not  oppressive,  would,  in  most 
cases,  afford  a  sufficient  safeguard  against  violations  of 
good  breeding.  And,  in  both  cases,  there  would  be  a 
reflex  action  of  the  law,  in  which  perhaps  its  most  salu- 
tary virtue  would  consist ;  as,  in  the  apprehension  of  its 

"   e """^ — — : ' 

^  '»  Lev.  xii.  1-8.  A  peculiar  retirement  was  prescribed  of  a  week  in 
case  of  the  birth  of  a  son  (at  the  end  of  which,  agreeably  to  ancient 
practice,  he  was  to  be  circumcised,  xii.  3 ;  Gen.  xvii.  12 ;  Luke  i.  59 ; 
John  vii.22) ;  and  of  a  fortnight  after  the  birth  of  a  daughter.  The  reason 
of  the  difference  made,  according  as  the  birth  was  of  one  or  the  other 
sex,  has  not  been  entirely  explained.  I  submit,  whether  it  may  not  have 
been  merely  intended  to  conciliate  the  greater  respect  for  the  mother  of  a 
male  child,  having  reference  to  tliat  studied  recognition  of  the  superiority 
of  this  sex,  which  pervades  the  Mosaic  institutions.  In  regionibus  sep- 
tentrionalibus,  lochia  rubra  post  parturitionem  plerumque  per  septem  dies 
durant ;  lochia  alba,  quae  subeunt,  per  viginti  seu  triginta.  Dicunt  medici 
Grffici,  post  partum  fcemininum  diutiiis  morbo  puerperam  laborare,  quam 

post  Virilem.  'H  xiiei^rit  ySytriLi  T^fi  yufeu^t  fiiri  Ttt  r«««*,  »is  (<ri  ri  <r«Xv  ' 
in  fti'  T>i  xiv^  ii/tipfr'  rifru^eutnrm  Ma)  iit iri  il  rf  xtuff  it  utiia^wif 

„  y'MTKi  ii/ii^fi  r(iiK4tTCk.  (Hippocrates,  Opera,  Edit  Foes.  p.  238.)  Negant 
scriptores  regionum  temporumque  nostroriun.  In  plagis  diversis,  hujus- 
modi  res  divers^  se  habent.  Quserant  viri  docti  in  Egypto  Syriaque  de 
re,  qus  institutioni  Mosaics  facem  prsbere  valeat. 


XII.]  LEVITICUS   X.    1— XV.   33.  275 

penalties,  occasions  by  which  they  might  be  unintention- 
ally and  accidentally  incurred  would  be  guarded  against 
and  removed  by  timely  precautions.  Individuals  would 
naturally  use  vigilance  and  forethought  to  avoid  what 
would  cause  their  company  to  be  shunned  by  their 
neighbours.* 

But  in  respect  to  one  prominent  case,  there  is  no 
obscurity  whatever.  A  person,  in  whom  appeared  any 
mark,  which  might  prove  to  be  a  symptom  of  leprosy, 
was  bound  to  present  himself  to  the  priest  for  examina- 
tion. If,  in  the  priest's  judgment,  there  was  ground 
for  apprehension  that  this  was  his  disease,  he  was  to 
be  shut  up  apart  for  a  week,  and  then  to  undergo  a 
second  inspection.  If  no  alteration  meanwhile  had 
taken  place,  another  week's  seclusion  and  a  third  ex- 
amination succeeded.  If  the  symptoms  had  disap- 
peared, or  if,  at  the  first  view,  they  were  found  to  fur- 
nish no  cause  for  alarm,  he  was  declared  clean,  on  an 
authority,  which  would  satisfy  all  doubts ;  and,  without 
fear  of  being  any  longer  suspected  and  shunned,  might 
return  to  his  accustomed  associates  and  occupations.! 
If,  on  the  contrary,  the  indications  of  leprosy,  which  are 
■ '■ ■■ .^ 

•  Lev.  XV.  1-15  de  Gonorrhreft,  Virulenta  plerumque  explicant  interpre- 
tes,  qiiEB  contactu  qualicunque  facillim^  propagatur.  E  versu  8  argumen- 
tatur  Michaelis,  medicos  antiques,  sive  mercurium  dulcem,  sive  aliud  tale 
niedicamentum  salivam  proritans,  in  hujusmodi  morbis  sanandis  adhi- 
buisse.  Hffimorrhoides  tamen  hsec  prsecepta  spectare  vult  Car.  Aug. 
Beyer.  Vide  Rosenmiilleri  Comment,  ad  loc.  —  Vers.  16-18,  contra  poly- 
gamiam  nimiam  cautum  esse,  quam  leges  Mosaicse  non  prorsus  vetant, 
(Marc.  X.  5-8,)  consentiunt  docti.  Ex.  xxi.  10,  Israelitse  novas  nuptias 
facienti,  concubitum  debitum  uxori  prius  adhibitse  negare  vetitum  est. 
Sed  quid  sit  "  concubitus  debitus  "  ?  Sine  dubio,  definivit  temporis  illius 
opinio.  Rabbinorum  de  hac  re  commenta  lectores  mei  fastidirent  Cert6 
vir  toties  poUutus,  quoties  debitum,  certis  temporibus  solvendum,  solvent, 
multas  novas  nuptias  inire  noluisset.  —  Vers.  19-30  de  Catemeniis  et 
Menorrhagia  fuse  disseritur.  Vers.  24  non  idem  facinus,  quod  Lev. 
XX.  18,  eed  lecti  cum  immunda.  societatem  castigat    (Compara  21.) 

t  xiii.  1-6. 


276  LEVITICUS   X.   1— XV.   33.  [LECT. 

described  with  great  minuteness,*  should  prove  to  be 
further  developed  after  the  delay,  or  if  they  should  be 
manifest  from  the  first,  he  was  to  be  pronounced  un- 
clean, and,  from  that  moment  till  he  was  restored,  if  that 
should  be  his  good-fortune,  he  must  dwell  without  the 
camp ;  and  even  there,  lest  any  should  come  near 
enough  to  him  in  their  walks  to  reach  the  contagion,  he 
was  required,  as  a  notice  to  them,  to  go  abroad  only  in 
tattered  clothes,  with  his  head  uncovered,  wearing  a 
badge  upon  his  face,  and  to  warn  them  by  crying  out, 
as  they  approached,  "  Unclean,  unclean."  f 

Should,  he  recover,  the  priest  visited  him  without  the 
camp  to  ascertain  and  announce  the  fact,  accompany- 
ing his  restoration  to  society  with  a  formal  ceremonial. 
First,  two  healthy  clean  birds  were  to  be  taken,  with 
a  quantity  of  cedar  wood,  scarlet  wool,  and  hyssop. 
One  of  them  was  to  be  killed  over  an  earthen  vessel, 
filled  with  fresh  water,  which,  being  thus  stained  with 
blood,  was  to  be  sprinkled  seven  times  over  the  leper. 
Having  shaved  and  bathed,  he  might  again  associate  with 
others ;  the  hving  bird  being  at  the  same  time  let  loose 
to  join  its  fellows,  probably  in  token  of  his  readmission 
into  society.  For  greater  caution,  however,  he  was  still 
not  allowed  to  go  to  his  own  tent  for  a  week  longer. | 
At  the  end  of  that  time,  having  repeated  his  personal 
purifications,  he  was  to  go  through  certain  other  cere- 
monies, in  order  to  his  full  restitution,  and  permission  to 
resort  again  to  the  Tabernacle.    A  he-Iamb  was  to  be 

»  Lev.  xiiL  9-44.  t  xiii.  7,  8, 45,  46. 

X  xiv.  1-8.  For  conjectures  concerning  the  reason  of  the  use  of  the 
blood-stained  water,  and  of  "cedar- wood,  scarlet,  and  hyssop,"  which  are 
obscure,  see  Patrick's  "  Commentary "  ad  loc.  also  Bochart's  "  Hierozoi- 
con,"  pars  2,  lib.  1,  cap.  22.  The  ancients  ascribed  to  cedar-wood  and 
hyssop  a  sanative  virtue  in  cutaneous  disorders.  See  Le  Clerc's  "  Com- 
mentary "  ad  loc.  For  some  account  of  the  scape-bird,  see  the  next  Lec- 
ture, p.  288,  note. 


XII.]  LEVITICUS   X.   1.  — XV.   33.  277 

presented  in  the  manner  of  a  Trespass  Offering,  another 
as  a  Sin  Offering,  and  a  ewe-lamb  ais  a  Burnt  Offer- 
ing, each  being  accompanied  with  a  Meat  Offering  of 
flour  mixed  with  oil.  In  case,  however,  of  the  poverty 
of  the  leper,  a  single  lamb  for  the  Trespass  Offering, 
with  the  corresponding  Meat  Offering,  and  two  turtle- 
doves or  young  pigeons  for  the  Sin  and  Burnt  Offerings, 
sufficed.  In  either  case  a  small  quantity  of  oil  was  to 
be  added,*  of  which  the  priest  was  to  pour  a  portion 
into  his  left  palm,  and,  with  one  finger  dipped  in  it,  to 
sprinkle  some  drops  in  the  direction  of  the  Tabernacle, 
and  touch  the  right  ear,  hand,  and  foot  of  thfe  leper,  after 
having,  in  hke  manner,  touched  them  with  the  blood  of 
the  animal  slain  for  a  Trespass  Offering.  Then  pouring 
what  remained  of  the  oil  on  the  leper's  head,  he  de- 
clared him  to  be  wholly  reinstated.! 

If  there  are  parts  of  this  ceremonial,  the  significance 
of  which  we  are  now  unable  to  explain,  it  is  natural  to 
suppose  that  some  had  their  origin  in  practices  anterior 
to  the  Law.  But,  in  general,  we  see  that  its  extent 
and  complexity  tended  to  impress  on  the  mind  of  the 
priest  a  sense  of  responsibility  for  the  careful  exercise 
of  a  discretion  on  his  part,  so  important  to  the  public 
safety;  and  that  the  deliberation,  with  which  it  caused 
him  to  pronounce  his  decisions,  tended  to  relieve  the 
individual,  when  examined  and  discharged,  from  further 
suspicion,  and  the  people  from  further  uneasiness  respect- 
ing meeting  with  him  in  society.  The  reasons  for  the 
extremely  solicitous  attention  to  this  disease,  are  made 
apparent  by  a  little  attention  to  its  malignant  nature. 

*  The  "  log  "  was  the  smallest  liquid  measure  ;  about  half  a  pint 
t  Lev.  xiv.  9-32.  The  ceremony  of  touching  the  right  ear,  hand,  and 
foot,  we  have  already  seen  used  on  a  different  occasion.  See  page  213. 
"  Upo7i  the  blood  of  the  Trespass  Offering,"  (verse  17,)  means,  in  addition 
to,  over  and  above,  that  blood,  which  had  been  already  sprinkled.  Com- 
pare verse  23. 


278  LEVITICUS  X.  1.  — XV.  33.  [LECT. 

Of  this,  I  will  but  mention  a  few  particulars,  among 
those  which  have  been  collected  by  writers  on  the  sub- 
ject, from  the  testimony  of  different  travellers  in  the 
East. 

The  leprosy,  a  disease  common  in  Asia  and  Africa, 
and  not  unknown  in  Europe,  from  which,  however,  it 
has  mostly  disappeared  since  the  fifteenth  century,  is 
one  of  the  most  distressing  maladies  to  which  the  human 
frame  is  subject.  The  body  becomes  covered  with  hard, 
rough  tubercles,  'which  finally  terminate  in  ulcers,  that 
penetrate  till  they  produce  a  caiies  of  the  bones.  The 
voice  becomes  Hoarse,  resembling  the  sound  well-known 
among  us,  as  produced  by  the  croup.  The  eyes  pro- 
ject, and  are  with  difficulty  turned  to  the  right  or  left. 
The  tongue  swells,  and  becomes  dry  and  discolored; 
and  the  blood  is  black,  with  a  putrid  odor.  The  joints 
of  the  extremities  become  affected,  swell,  and  mortify, 
till  they  successively  separate  and  drop  off,  without  pain, 
and  the  wound  granulates  and  heals.  Throughout,  there 
is  no  acute  suffering ;  but  the  patient  feels  a  numbness 
in  his  hands  and  feet.  The  misery  of  the  disease  is 
aggravated  by  its  slow  progress,  which  often  occupies 
twenty  years  and  more,  till,  in  its  last  Stage,  the  sufferer 
"  becomes  a  hideous  spectacle,  and  falls  in  pieces."  It 
is  extremely  difficult  of  cure ;  predisposition  to  it  is  he- 
reditary ;  and  it  is  actively  contagious.* 

In  connexion  with  this  subject,  we  find  directions 
given  respecting  what  is  called  the  leprosy  of  houses, 
and  of  garments.  Various  considerations  show  that  the 
term  "  leprosy  "  is  not  here  intended  to  be  used  of  the 

*  Further  particulars  maybe  seen  in  Jahn's  "  ArchseologiaBiblica,"  cap. 
12,  §  188, 189 ;  and  in  Michaelis'  "  Commentaries  "  &c.,  book  4,  chap.  4, 
part  2,  §2-4.  The  latter  writer  gives  full  extracts  from  the  Report  of 
M.  Peyssonel,  a  physician  sent  by  the  King  of  France,  in  1757,  to  Guada- 
loupe,  to  observe  the  leprosy  imported,  some  years  before,  from  Africa, 
into  that  island. 


XII.]  LEVITICUS  X.  1.  — XV.  33.  279 

disease  which  affects  the  human  system,  but  has  a  sense 
originating  in  a  figurative  application,  as  agriculturists 
speak  of  the  "  cancer,"  for  example,  in  trees ;  *  and 
that,  accordingly,  the  introduction  of  the  subject  here 
is  to  be  accounted  for  on  the  grounds  of  the  asso- 
ciation suggested  by  the  name,  and  of  the  similarity, 
in  some  respects,  of  the  ritual  prescribed  in  relation  to 
the  leprosies  of  the  different  kinds.  For  instance ;  the 
leprosy  in  a  garment  is  capable  of  being  seen,  and  of 
affecting  either  the  warp  or  woof  in  woven  cloth,  while 
it  leaves  the  other  pai't  unharmed ;  f  neither  of  which 
circumstances  could  occur  with  a  garment,  which  was 
merely  the  medium  for  communicating  a  human  malady. 
And,  in  the  case  of  houses,  it  is  equally  clear,  that  no 
leprous  infection  was  dreaded;  for  then  the  last  course 
which  a  wise  legislator  could  have  taken,  would  be  to 
order,  that  men  should  expose  themselves  to  it  by  enter- 
ing a  suspected  house  to  remove  all  the  furniture  pre- 
vious to  its  examination.! 

Accordingly  modern  commentators  are  for  the  most 
part  agreed  in  receiving  the  term  "leprosy,"  in  these 
passages,  in  the  figurative  acceptation  which  I  have 
suggested.  In  the  directions  respecting  the  leprosy  of 
garments,  they  find  rules  of  the  economical  class,  having 
in  view  the  suppression  of  the  fraudulent  practice  of 
employing  unsound  materials  in  linen  or  woollen  fabrics, 
or  in  preparations  of  leather.  Whoever  found  himself 
in  possession  of  a  damaged  article  of  either  of  these 
kinds,  was  not  only  punished,  for  his  carelessness  in 
making  the  purchase,  by  its  inferior  serviceableness 
and  more  speedy  decay,  but,  when  the  defect  was  ascer- 

*  So,  inversely,  the  word  "  rot,"  is  used  with  us,  for  a  disease  of  ani- 
mal life,  by  a  transfer  from  its  primitive  sense  of  decomposition  of  dead 
matter. 

t  Lev.  xiiL  49-51.  t  xiv.  36. 


280  LEVITICUS  X.  1.  — XV.  33.  [LECT. 

tained,  and  was  still  found  to  be  extending  after  the 
removal  of  a  portion,  he  was  compelled  to  forfeit  the 
whole  ;  otherwise,  when  it  had  been  carefully  cleansed, 
he  might  resume  its  use.*  When  the  loss  to  the  owner 
was  in  such  cases  so  unavoidable  and  so  serious,  great 
caution  would  necessarily  come  to  be  exercised  in 
manufacturing  for  one's  own  use,  and  ip  purchasing  from 
others ;  and  those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  manufactured 
for  sale,  would  be  placed  under  a  strong  motive  to  honest 
dealings,  and  to  a  careful  selection  of  their  materials  and 
supervision  of  their  workmen,  in  view  of  the  discredit 
and  loss  of  business,  which,  when  their  customers  were 
made  such  sufferers  by  their  neglect,  would  immediately 
ensue.  If  it  should  be  said,  that  the  prevention  of  the 
sale  of  goods  of  inferior  quality  is  a  matter  with  which 
law  does  not  commonly  interfere,  being  content  to  leave 
it  to  the  care  of  him  who  would  be  the  loser  by  their 
purchase,  it  might  be  replied,  that,  among  an  ignorant 
and  inexperienced  people,  law  may  advantageously  do 
not  a  few  things,  which,  under  different  circumstances, 
are  better  trusted  to  individual  discretion.    But  the  truth 

*  Lev.  xiii.  47-59.  Neither  in  this  case,  nor  in  that  of  .houses,  does 
Moses  drop  any  hint,  that  the  leprosy  by  which  they  were  affected  could 
be  communicated  to  man.  Says  Michaelis,  ("  Commentaries  "  &c.,  book 
4,  chap.  4,  part  2,  §  5,)  "  In  regard  to  wool  and  woollen  stuffs,  I  have  con- 
sulted the  greatest  manufacturer  in  the  electorate  of  Hanover,  and  he 
informs  me,  that  what  he  has  read  in  my  German  Bible,  at  this  passage, 
will  be  found  to  hold  good,  at  any  rate  with  regard  to  woollen  articles ; 
and  that  it  proceeds  from  what  is  called  dead  tvool,  that  is,  the  wool  of 
sheep  that  have  died  by  disease  ; and  that,  according  to  the  es- 
tablished use  of  honest  manufacturers,  it  is  unfair  to  manufacture  dead 
wool  into  any  article  worn  by  man,  because  vermin  are  so  apt  to  establish 
themselves  in  it,  particularly  when  it  is  worn  close  to  the  body,  and  warmed 
thereby."  This  shows  how  the  case  presented  by  Moses,  of  leprosy  being 
found  in  the  warp  and  not  in  the  woof,  and  vice  versa,  would  be  likely  to 
occur,  good  wool  being  used  for  the  one,  and  bad  wool  for  the  other.  The 
circumstance  of  a  tendency  to  harbour  vermin  also  acquires  a  special 
importance,  in  the  case  of  a  people,  who,  like  the  Jews,  wore  woollen 
next  the  skin,  and  who  lived  in  such  a  compact  society. 


XII.]  LEVITICUS  X.   1.— XV.  33.  281 

is,  that  these  simple  arrangements  of  the  Mosaic  code 
have  a  striking  analogy  with  those  Inspection  Laws  of 
modern  times,  by  which  communities  provide  for  the 
honest  conduct  of  some  branch  of  commerce,  and  for 
keeping  up  its  credit,  when  it  is  an  important  source  of 
the  public  wealth.  The  institutions  of  Moses,  in  this 
particular,  chiefly  diflfered  from  those  laws  in  virtually 
constituting  every  citizen,  who  either  manufactured  or 
purchased,  a  public  inspector ;  and  in  compelling  him  to 
execute  the  office  carefully,  under  a  penalty  which 
would  presently  be  sure  to  reach  him,  and  which  would 
convey  to  him  an  effectual  lesson  for  the  future.  I  add, 
that  the  rule  in  question  would  connect  itself  with  neat- 
ness and  propriety  of  attire,  and  so  with  health,  decency 
of  manners,  and  ultimately  a  higher  civilization,  in  ways, 
which,  at  this  distance  of  time,  it  is  not  to  be  supposed 
that  we  should  be  able  to  enumerate.  A  stained,  squal- 
id garment,  exposed  the  wearer  presently  to  remark 
and  suspicion.  It  might  be  merely  foul,  and  not  such 
as  was  forbidden  by  the.  law.  But,  the  suspicion  once 
excited,  the  only  way  to  remove  it  was,  to  have  the 
article  inspected  by  the  priest,  who,  if  any  doubt  existed 
on  his  mind,  was  to  keep  it  a  week  for  further  examina- 
tion, and  then,  if  he  returned  it,  to  see  that  it  was  first 
thoroughly  cleansed.  Rather  than  subject  himself  to 
all  this  trouble,  every  one  would  see  that  the  better 
way  was,  to  go  abroad  attired  in  such  a  manner,  as 
to  attract  no  unfavorable  observation  from  his  neigh- 
bours.* 

The  passage,  which  gives  directions  respecting  the 

*  I  think  it  highly  probable,  that  the  metaphorical  word  "leprosy"  was 
the  rather  used  in  this  passage  on  account  of  the  disgusting  ideas,  which, 
by  association  with  the  human  disease,  the  view  of  a  blemish  in  clothing, 
called  by  the  same  name,  would  excite  in  the  mind-  And  this  hint  will 
also  help  us  to  account  for  the  connexion  in  which  these  directions  occur. 

VOL.  I.  36 


282  LEVITICUS  X.  1.  — XV.  33.  [LECT. 

leprosy  of  houses,  is  understood  to  relate  to  a  saline 
efflorescence,  spreading  in  stones  and  plaster,  and  ren- 
dering them  offensive  and  unhealthy.*  It  is  commonly 
called  salt-petre,  and,  as  known  in  modern  times,  corre- 
sponds in  most  particulars  with  the  Mosaic  description. 
It  causes  walls  to  become  mouldy,  till  at  length,  as  the 
corrosion  extends,  they  are  so  weakened  as  to  fall  in. 
It  damages  articles  placed  near  it,  if  liable  to  injury  from 
dampness  and  acids,  and  communicates  to  the  atmo- 
sphere an  unwholesome  taint,  so  as  to  render  apartments 
unfit  for  occupation.  If  only  part  of  the  stone  affected 
by  it  is  removed,  it  always  effloresces  anew. 

In  case  of  any  appearance,  which  might  prove  to  be 
of  this  character,  being  remarked  in  any  Israelitish 
dwelling,  the  law  required  that  it  should  be  reported 
to  the  priest,  who  should  cause  the  house  to  be,  in  the 
first  place,  emptied  of  its  furniture,  in  order  to  a  thorough 
examination.  Having  then  made  his  observations,  he 
was  to  close  the  house  for  a  week  ;  at  the  end  of 
which  time,  if  he  found  that  the  stains  had  spread,  he 
was  to  order  the  substitution  of  other  stones  in  the 
place  of  those  affected,  the  latter  being  cast  "into  an 
unclean  place  without  the  city,"  and  the  whole  house 
within  being  cleansed  by  scraping  its  stones  and  plaster- 

*  «  All  the  houses  of  Malta,  says  Dolomieu,  are  built  of  a  fine-grained 
lime-stone,  of  a  loose  and  soft  texture.  There  is  a  circumstance  which 
hastens  its  destruction,  and  reduces  it  to  powder,  viz.  when  it  is  wetted  by 
sea-water.  After  this,  it  never  dries,  but  is  covered  by  a  saline  efflo- 
rescence, and  a  crust  is  formed  some  tenths  of  an  inch  thick,  mixed  with 
common  salt,  nitre,  and  nitrated  lime.  Under  this  crust,  the  stone  moul- 
ders into  dust,  the  crust  falls  off,  and  other  crusts  are  successively  formed, 

till  the  whole  stone  is  destroyed Nor  does  it  stop  there,  but  after 

some  time  affects  all  the  neighbouring  stones  in  the  wall."  Kirwan's  "  Geo- 
logical Essays,"  p.  148.  —  Michaelis  describes  the  salt-petre,  and  its  effects, 
as  known  in  Germany,  in  his  "  Commentaries,"  book  4,  chap.  4,  part  2,  §  5. 
The  reddish  color  of  spots,  mentioned  by  Moses,  is  observed  in  that  country. 
The  "  greenish  "  (verse  37)  may  have  been  a  peculiarity  of  the  stone,  or 
of  tlie  climate  of  Palestine. 


XII.]  LEVITICUS  X.   1.  — XY.  33.  283 

ing  it  anew.*  If,  this  done,  no  other  stones  were  found 
discolored,  the  house  was  pronounced  clean,  when  the 
same  ceremony  had  been  gone  through  which  made 
part  of  the  ricual  in  the  case  of  a  leprous  man.f  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  same  appearances  should  be  found 
to  have  returned,  the  dwelling  was  to  be  torn  down,  and 
its  materials  conveyed  out  of  the  city,  "  into  an  unclean 
place,"  where  no  one  would  go  in  search  of  them  to 
apply  them  to  any  further  use.t  A  person  who  ate  or 
lodged  in  the  house,  or  who  even  entered  it  during  the 
time  that  it  was  under  examination,  contracted  legal 
uncleanness  ;  but,  not  to  extend  this  penalty  too  far,  to 
such  as  had  had  no  warning,  it  was  not  incurred  till  the 
priest  had  entered  on  the  scrutiny.^ 

The  spirit  of  these  laws  will  be  understood  from  what 
has  been  said  on  the  analogous  subject  of  the  leprosy 
of  garments.  Serious  casualties  in  our  cities,  occurring 
from  time  to  time,  in  consequence  of  unfaithful  building, 
admonish  us  that  an  Inspection  of  Buildings,  by  public 
authority,  might  not  be  a  useless  institution.  The  Law 
of  Moses,  with  reference  particularly  to  one  danger, 
incident  probably  to  the  climate,  and  to  the  materials  in 
common  use,  made  every  man  his  own  inspector,  and 
by  subjecting  him  to  certain  trouble  and  expense,  in 
case  of  the  soundness  and  stability  of  his  dwelling  be- 
coming at  all  questionable,  influenced  him  prospectively 
to  great  care  in  the  selection  of  materials.  And  when 
we  remember,  that  what  was  the  rule  for  the  individual 
was  the  rule  for  the  nation,  we  perceive,  not  only  how 
great  might  be  the  security  to  life  thus  afforded,  but 
how  extensive  would  be  the  ultimate  saving  of  labor,  in 
consequence  of  the  permanency  of  family  habitations, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  additional  interest  given  by  this 

*  Lev.  xiv.  1-4?.  f  xiv.  48 - Sa  t  "v.  43-45. 

^  xiv.  36,  46,  47. 


284  LEVITICUS  X.  l.-XV.  33.  [LECT. 

circumstance  to  the  associations  of  home.  If  the  de- 
struction of  a  house  seems  to  us  a  severe  punishment 
for  want  of  sufficient  care  in  its  erection,  we  may  call 
to  mind,  that  the  dwellings  of  the  Israelites  were  of  very 
inferior  costliness  to  ours,  and  that  the  purpose  of  the 
severity  of  the  penalty  w-as,  to  teach  precautions  which 
would  prevent  its  execution.  Moreover,  as  a  mere  eco- 
nomical arrangement,  it  may  have  been  often  for  the 
advantage  rather  than  the  injury  of  the  individual  pro- 
prietor, who  would  do  better  to  sacrifice  his  house, 
though,  if  left  to  his  own  discretion,  he  might  be  reluct- 
ant so  to  do,  than  have  the  more  valuable  property, 
which  it  contained,  destroyed  by  its  humid  atmosphere. 
And,  after  all,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  the  rule,  as  to  its 
principal  operation,  is  to  be  reckoned  in  the  class  of 
Health  Laws.  It  tended  to  secure  to  every  Israelite  a 
dwelling  free  from  one  noxious  kind  of  humidity  ;  and, 
in  this  view,  the  arrangement  may  have  had  pecuhar 
consideration  for  slaves,  and  other  inferiors,  to  whom 
the  least  eligible  accommodations  of  a  house  would  be 
likely  to  be  assigned.  We  may  further  remark,  that, 
though  the  rule  is  not  for  houses  in  cities  alone,  yet 
some  of  the  prescribed  details  of  purification  show  that 
it  was  these  which  were  chiefly  had  in  view.*  In  cities, 
containing  a  number  of  contiguous  houses,  affected  in 
the  manner  in  question,  the  surrounding  atmosphere 
would  be  vitiated,  and  the  health  of  a  large  population 
might  be  brought  into  danger. 

The  similarity  of  the  ritual  prescribed  for  the  cleans- 
ing of  a  leprous  house,  to  that  used  in  the  cleansing  of 
a  leper,  I  am  disposed  to  believe  was  intended,  by  force 
of  a  natural  mental  association,  to  excite  a  degree  of 
disgust  in  reference  to  the  former  case,  similar  to  what 

*  Compare  Lev.  xiv.  34,  with  40,  41,  45,  53. 


XII.]  LEVITICUS   X.  1.  — XV.  33.  285 

was  unavoidably  felt  in  relation  to  the  latter,  and  so  to 
secure  more  attention  to  the  subject ;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  scrupulous  precautions  taken  against  all 
which  but  bore  the  name  of  leprosy,  would  tend  to 
strengthen  the  strong  feeling  entertained  against  that 
pestilent  human  taint,  to  which  the  name  most  properly 
belonged.  The  provision,  that,  after  a  priest  had  been 
sent  for,  uncleanness  should  not  be  contracted  by  enter- 
ing the  house  till  he  had  proceeded  to  his  examination,* 
was  the  law's  encouragement  to  the  householder  to  give 
seasonable  information  respecting  the  suspicious  state  of 
his  premises ;  for  if,  concealing  the  fact,  he  waited  till 
the  symptoms  were  no  longer  doubtful,  and  then  some 
accident  should  betray  their  existence,  all  the  furniture 
which  the  house  contained  became  unclean  along  with 
it,  to  his  own  damage. 

*  Lev.  xiv.  36. 


286  LEVITICUS  XVI,  1.  — XXVII.  34.  [LECT. 


LECTURE   XIII. 

LEVITICUS    XVI.   1.— XXVII.  34. 

Dat  of  Atonement.  —  Scape-Goat.  —  Repetition  of  some  Previ- 
ous   Laws.  —  Rules    respecting   Marriage.  —  Miscellaneous 

I  Laws  having  Reference  to  Idolatry, — and  enforcing  Hu- 
mane Dispositions.  —  Specification  of  some  Penalties.  — 
Rules  designed  to  excite  Reverence  for  the  Sacerdotal 
Office.  —  Repetition  of  Rules  respecting  the  Sabbath,  the 
Fast,  and  the  Festivals.  — Care  of  the  Candlestick,  and  of 
the  Table  of  Shew-Bread.  —  Crime  and  Fate  of  the  Son  of 
Shelomith. —  Continuation  of  Legal  Penalties. —  The  Sab- 
batical Year.  —  The  Year  of  Jubilee. — Exposition  of  the 
Consequences  of  Obedience  and  Disobedience.  —  Laws  re- 
specting Vows.  —  Institution  ot  the  Payment  of  Tithes. 

The  last  twelve  chapters  of  the  book  of  Leviticus 
present  the  conclusion  of  the  Mosaic  code,  as  established 
at  Mount  Sinai.  From  their  nature,  as  designed  to  sup- 
ply chasms  in  the  previous  legislation,  and  to  carry  some 
of  its  provisions  into  further  detail,  so  as  to  furnish  a  kind 
of  completion  of  the  law,  before  the  organization  of  the 
people,  their  contents  are  so  miscellaneous,  that  the  most 
convenient  way  to  treat  them  is  by  following  the  order 
of  the  chapters. 

The  sixteenth  chapter  is  supplementary  to  a  previous 
cursory  notice  of  the  annual  day  of  Atonement,  the 
only  legal  fast.*  It  is  now  declared,  that  on  that  day 
alone,  of  all  the  year,  viz.  on  the  tenth  day  of  the 
seventh  month,  or  Tisri,  the  high-priest  may  enter  the 
Holy  of  Holies,  and  that  then  (to  the  end,  no  doubt,  of 
exciting  a  greater  reverence  on  his  part,  and  that  of  the 

*  Ex.  XXX.  10. 


XIIL]  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.  — XXVII.  34.  287 

people)  he  must  enter  it  with  peculiar  ceremonies.* 
On  that  occasion,  having  bathed  and  arrayed  himself 
in  the  habiliments  of  a  common  priest,  he  was  first  to 
offer  for  himself  a  young  bullock  for  a  Sin  Offering. 
He  was  then  to  bring  two  kids,  one  of  them  designated 
by  lot,  to  be  sacrificed  as  a  Sin  Offering  for  the  people, 
the  other,  called  the  "  Scape-Goat,"  to  be  let  loose  into 
the  wilderness,  after  Aaron  had  laid  his  hands  upon  its 
head,  and  confessed  over  it  "all  the  iniquities  of  the 
children  of  Israel,  and  all  their  transgressions  in  all  their 
sins."  The  service  concluded  by  the  sacrifice  of  a  ram 
as  a  Burnt  Offering  for  the  people,  and  another  for  the 
priest.  The  day  was  intended  to  serve  the  appropriate 
uses  of  a  fast.  It  was  a  day  of  national  humiliation  and 
repentance  for  sin.  And  the  ritual  was  accordingly  of 
a  nature  to  excite  thoughtfulness  and  contrition.  The 
confession  of  the  people's  sins  by  the  high-priest,  with 
the  accompanying  formalities,  must  especially  have  had 
an  effectual  tendency  to  this  end.f 

•  Verse  1  seems  to  intimate,  that  this  further  precaution  was  conse- 
quent upon  the  irreverent  behaviour  of  Nadab  and  Abihu. — The  last 
clause  in  verse  2  is  rendered  by  our  translators,  "  I  will  appear  in  the 
cloud  upon  the  mercy-seat"  I  would  render  it  more  literally ;  "  for  [or 
but]  with  a  cloud  [that  is,  the  cloud  of  incense  which  the  priest  was  to 
raise,]  I  will  be  seen  [that  is,  visited]  upon  the  mercy-seat."  The  mean- 
ing is,  not  that  there  should  be  any  miraculous  manifestation  of  the  Divine 
Being  to  Aaron,  but  that  Aaron  must  not  come  into  that  which  was  His 
virtual  presence,  without  observing  those  forms  of  which  the  burning  of  a 
cloud  of  incense  made  a  part  Compare  verse  13.  What  we  read  in 
various  books  about  what  is  called  the  "Sheldnah"  upon  the  Mercy- 
Seat,  I  take  to  be  all  unauthorized  imagination. 

f  The  word  "  atonement,"  (verses  10,  11,)  which,  from  its  use  in  techni- 
cal theology,  has  come  to  have  a  different  significance  attaclied  to  it, 
denoted,  at  the  time  when  our  translation  was  made,' simply  recontUiaiion, 
of  whatever  kind  it  might  be,  between  whatever  parties,  by  whatever 
means  effected.  This  was  agreeable  to  its  etymology;  at-one-ment,  that 
is,  putting  at  one.    Such  was  the  use  of  the  old  writers.     So  Shakspeare 

''  He  seeks  to  make  atonement 
Between  the  Duke  of  Gloucester  and  your  brothers." 


288  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.  — XXVII.  34.  [LECT. 

The  seventeenth  chapter  contains  four  laws,  the  first 
two  relating  to  the  slaughtering  of  animals  for  food  at 
the  door  of  the  Tabernacle  of  the  Congregation,  and  no- 
where else ;  and  the  third  and  fourth,  to  abstinence 
from  blood,  and  from  the  flesh  of  animals  dying  a  natu- 
ral death.  But  they  are  not,  therefore,  mere  repetitions 
of  the  previous  commands  on  the  same  subjects.  The 
previous  direction  respecting  the  slaughtering  of  animals, 
had  perhaps  had.  reference  only  to  such  as  were  designed 
to  be  used  in  sacrifice,  and  it  had  been  obligatory  hither- 
to only  on  the  Jewish  people.  It  was  now,  for  great- 
er security,  extended  to  strangers  sojourning  among 
them,  and  to  the  killing  of  animals  intended  to  be  used 
as  food,  a  portion  of  every  one  of  which  (when  of  a 
suitable  description)  was  now  required  to  be  presented 
as  an  offering.*     The  obligation  of  the  third  and  fourth 

Accordingly,  in  the  use  of  the  Mosaic  Law,  atonement  is  said  to  be  made 
for  whatever  is  reconciled  to  God,  in  the  sense  of  being  set  right  with 
him,  —  placed  in  a  state  of  favor  and  acceptance  with  him.  So  things 
may  be  atoned  for,  as  well  as  persons;  it  being  a  mistake  to  suppose,  that 
there  must  be  previous  sin,  in  order  to  create  a  necessity  for  "  atonement " 
in  the  Scripture  sense.  See  Ex.  xxix.  37;  Lev.  xiv.  53;  xvi.  16,  18. — 
"  Eastward,"  in  verse  14,  means  "  on  the  east  side "  of  the  mercy-seat, 
viz.  that  side  which  faced  the  Holy  Place.  — The  ceremony  of  the  "  Scape- 
Goat,"  in  which  commentators  have  so  generally  found  a  type  of  a  doc- 
trine of  th?  Christian  religion,  appears  to  be  but  the  continuation,  with 
spme  change,  of  a  custom  with  which  the  Israelites  had  become  acquaint- 
ed in  Egypt.  See  Herodotus,  lib.  2,  §  39.  A  similar  custom  prevailed 
among  the  Persians.  See  Clasenius'  "  Theologia  Gentilis,"  pars  1,  cap. 
7,  §  2.  And  among  the  Hindoos,  with  whom  the  victim  was  a  horse,  instead 
of  a  goat.  See  Halhed's  "  Code  of  Gentoo  Laws,"  Pref  p.  16  -20.  To  the 
same  class  of  figurative  ceremonies,  which,  with  a  substantial  agreement, 
■  might  be  expected  to  present  differences  in  the  details,  manifestly  belongs 
the  ritual  described  in  Lev.  xiv.  7,  53.  —  When  the  ceremonies  of  the 
day  drew  towards  a  close,  it  has  been  inferred  from  verse  24,  that  the 
high-priest  was  to  clothe  himself  in  his  peculiar  pontificals,  having  hitherto 
worn  the  dress  of  a  common  priest  (verse  4)  in  token  of  humility,  and  for 
greater  convenience  in  performing  his  sacrificial  function. — In  verse  29, 
we  find  the  language  customarily  used  concerning  fasts.  Compare 
Is.  Iviii.  5. 

*  To  reasons  for  this  provision,  above  enlarged  on,  (pp.  253-254,)  I  may 


XIII.]  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.  — XXVII.  34.  289 

commands  was  also  now  extended,  for  the  first  time, 
to  strangers,  for  the  better  securing  of  the  Israelites 
against  injury  from  the  example  of  any  of  their  neigh- 
bours, holding  a  different  faith.^ 

The  eighteenth  chapter  defines  the  law  of  chastity, 
with  a  special  enumeration  of  the  most  Keinoiis  offences 
against  it,  and  an  express  reference  to  the  corrupt 
practices  of  the  neighbouring  nations  in  this  particular, 
as  requiring  the  more  circumspection  and  strictness  on 
the  part  of  the  Jews.f 

In  respect  to  domestic  alliances,  it  is  an  error  to  sup- 
pose that  the  Jews  might  not  contract  them  with  women 
of  other  nations.  The  severest  re^riction  of  this  kind 
which  occurs,  relates  only  to  the  seven  nations  of  Ca- 
naan.f  Polygamy,  as  is  well  known,  was  not  forbidden  ;  § 
but  it  was  subject  to  obligations  which  kept  it  within 
limits, II  and,  finally,  as  the  state  of  things  in  our  Saviour's 

add  the  following;  It  was  desirable  that  these  valuable  animals  should  mul- 
tiply, so  as  to  stock  the  country  of  Canaan,  when  the  people  should  arrive 
tiiere  ;  a  result,  which  would  be  promoted  by  the  inconvenience  of  having 
to  repair  to  the  Tabernacle  of  the  Congregation  to  slaughter  them,  when 
they  were  slaughtered  at  all,  and  to  devote  a  portion  of  them  to  sacrificial 
use.  A  herdsman,  at  a  distance  from  the  central  camp,  would,  for  the 
most'  part,  deny  himself  the  luxury  of  feasting  upon  them,  sooner  than 
obtain  the  gratification  at  such  cost  and  trouble. 

*  Verses  11-14  I  understand  as  follows;  viz.  "  I  who  quickened  the 
principle  of  animal  life,  —  in  other  words,  who  caused  the  blood  to  flow, 
—  have  a  right  to  say  how  it  shall  be  used ;  and  I  do  accordingly  pre- 
scribe to  you  a  rule  respecting  it.  I  have  given  you  the  blood  of  animals 
for  only  one  use  (11) ;  the  sacred  use  of  an  oflfering  on  my  altar.  Beyond 
that  use,  you  have  no  control  over  it  Dispose  of  it  then  as  I  direct.  Do 
not  taste  it  yourselves  (12);  and  what  ybu  may  not  offer  upon  the  altar, 
put  carefully  out  of  the  way  of  others  (13)."  —  The  substantial  reason  of 
the  prohibition  has  been  already  mentioned.  See  p.  271.  The  form 
chosen  for  its  enforcement  (14),  has  reference  to  the  same  view  which  is 
set  forth  in  Gen.  ix.  4-6,  where  God,  as  the  giver  and  sovereign  of  all 
life,  animal  and  human,  is  represented  as  demanding  that  the  blood,  that 
preserves  it,  shall  be  respected  as  belonging  to  him. 

t  Lev.  xviii.  2-5,  24-30.         J  Ex.  xxxiv.  11-16.         §  Deut  xxi.  15. 

II  See  page  275,  note.  —  The  expressions,  "I  Jehovah,"  and  "I  Jehovah 
your  God,"  (Lev.  xviii.  4,  5,)  in  the  form  of  a  royal  signature  to  an  edict, 

VOL.  1.  37 


290  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.  — XXVII.  34.  [LECT. 

time  shows,  fell  almost  into  disuse.  In  respect  to  the 
prohibited  degrees  of  consanguinity,  two  or  three  pro- 
visions demand  particular  attention.  A  man  is  not  for- 
bidden to  marry  his  wife's  sister,  except  in  his  wife's 
lifetime.;  the  latter  provision  having  in  view,  as  is  dis- 
tinctly intimated,  to  prevent  a  relation  so  tender  as  the 
sisterly,  from  being  embittered  by  jealousy.*  On  the 
other  hand,  a  woman  might  not  marry  her  husband's 
brother,  even,  .as  appears,  after  her  husband's  death.f 
The"  reason  of  this  arrangement  is  to  be  sought  in  the 
constitution  of  Jewish  society.  Brothers,  and  of  course 
their  wives,  being  members  of  the  same  family,  attach- 
ments of  a  dangerous  nature,  encouraged  by  the  hope 
of  a  future  union,  might  come  to  be  cherished,  leading 
even  to  plots  against  the  husband's  life,  unless  the  law 
placed  its  severest  reprobation  upon  them,  by  declaring, 
that  such  a  union  would  be  no  better  than  incestuous, 
even  if  the  wife  should  be  left  at  liberty  by  her  hus- 
band's death. t  Again ;  for  aught  that  appears,  a  man 
might  marry  his  niece,  but  not  either  his  paternal  or 
maternal  aunt ;  ^  a  distinction  for  which  no  more  proba- 
ble reason  presents  itself,  than  the  general  unsuitable- 
ness  of  such  connexions  from  disparity  of  age,  while 
9it  the  same  time  the  natural  influence,  exercised  in  the 
relation  in  question,  over  a  youth's  mind,  might,  unless 
the  union  were  positively  forbidden,  be  employed  to 
bring  it  about.  || 

occur  frequently  henceforward  in  this  book,  and  a  few  times  in  that  of 
Numbers,  (as  Numb.  iii.  13,  45;  x.  10.)    Compare  Gen.  xli.  44. 

•  Lev.  xviii.  18.  f  xviii.  16. 

t  We  shall  see,  by  and  by  (Deut  xxv.  5),  that,  in  one  case,  a  provision 
so  absolute  was  made  to  yield  either  to  an  urgent  reason  of  public  policy, 
or,  what  is  perhaps  more  likely,  a  fixed  taste  and  habit  of  the  people. 

§  Lev.  xviii.  12,  13. 

II  Also,  the  usual  greater  intimacy  with  an  aunt  than  with  a  niece, 
might,  in  that  unformed  state  of  society,  make  this  rule  important,  as  an 
additional  security  against  seduction  under  a  promise  of  marriage. — 


XIII.]  LEVITICUS  XVI.   1.  — XXVII.  34  291 

The  nineteenth  chapter  contains  a  variety  of  laws, 
some  of  which  we  have  previously  met  with  in  different 
connexions,  while  others  were  now  promulgated  for  the 
first  time.*  The  question  why  those  belonging  to  the 
former  class  were  selected  from  others,  to  be  merely 
repeated,  without  variation  or  addition,  would  be  one, 
which,  from  want  of  acquaintance  with  the  circumstances 
of  the  time,  .we  should  be  at  a  loss  to  answer.  But 
that  some  reason  should  have  existed  for  that  course,  is 
certainly  nothing  to  surprise  us.  Nothing  is  more  com- 
mon, than  for  proclanvation  to  be  made  of  laws,  which 
some  occasion  has  arisen  for  bringing  distinctly  to  a 
people's  notice.f 

Some  of  the  new  laws  in  this  chapter  appear,  more 
or  less  clearly,  to  have  had  reference  to  heathen  cus- 
toms, being  intended  as  further  safeguards  for  the  purity 

Verse  II  has  perplexed  the  commentators,  because  of  their  supposing  it 
to  be  a  mere  repetition  of  9.  But  I  think  it  is  not  so.  In  a  case  of  such 
importance,  it  was  necessary  to  use  every  precaution  against  dishonest 
casuistry,  for  the  same  reason  which  justifies  the  verbosity  of  indictments 
and  other  legal  instruments  of  the  present  day.  Accordingly,  tiie  law- 
giver having  forbidden  (verse  9)  an  alliance  with  the  daughter,  legitimate 
or  illegitimate,  of  father  or  mother,  repeats  the  prohibition,  in  verse  II,  in 
respect  to  one  who  was  daughter  at  once  of  father  and  mother.  —  Verse 
21  is  explained  ^y  2  Kings  xxiii.  10 ;  Jer.  vii.  31  ;  xxxii.  35;  and  Diodorus 
Siculus,  (lib.  20,  cap.  14,)  and  Quintus  Curtius,  (lib.  4,  §  15.)  allude  to  the 
same  enormity  among  the  Carthaginians.  But  the  question  remains,  how 
the  precept  came  to  be  introduced  here,  where  it  does  not  seem  to  be  in 
place.  I  think  that  question  cannot  be  satisfactorily  answered.  But  it  ia 
very  doubtful  whether  we  have  the  genuine  reading  of  the  passage.  The 
Septuagint  version  presents  a  different  sense  from  the  Hebrew,  and  the 
Syriac  reading  is  materially  different  from  both;  and  each  repeats  its 
own  variation  in  Lev.  xx.  2. 

*  xix.  3-8,  11,  12,26,30. 

f  Also,  I  think  it  may  be  remarked,  that,  in  some  instances,  an  old  com- 
mand is  repeated,  in  order  to  introduce  a  new  one,  the  spirit  and  princi- 
ple of  which  are  the  same.  E.  g.  in  verse  11,  the  command  of  the 
Decalogue,  "  Thou  shalt  not  steal "  is  repeated,  in  order  to  give  it  the 
wider  extension  of  prohibition  of  other  kinds  of  fraud  ;  and,  in  verse  30, 
upon  the  older  precept  to  keep  the  Sabbath  is  superinduced  another,  rest- 
ing on  similar  grounds. 


292  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.  — XXVII.  34.  [LECT. 

of  the  faith.  The  sowing  of  a  field  with  mingled  seed, 
for  example,  was  a  practice  of  idolaters,  who  supposed 
that  they  should  thus  bring  down  a  blessing  from  their 
deities ;  and  garments  of  linsey-woolsey,  forbidden  in 
the  same  verse,  were  the  appropriate  dress  of  the  priests 
of  the  Zabian  idolatry  at  their  devotions.*  . 

Another  portion  of  this  chapter  deserves  particular 
attention,  presenting, -as  the  laws  contained  in  it  do,  a 
manifest  advance  upon  the  tone .  of  all,  having  a  similar 
purpose,  which  have  yet  come  under  our  notice.  These 
laws  do  not  stop  short  in  the  prohibition  merely  of  what 
is  mischievous.  They  prompt  to  acts  of  usefulness,  and 
generous  dispositions.  They  breathe  the  spirit  of  a 
thoughtful  and  delicate  humanity.  The  Israelite  is 
taught,  that  in  his  harvesting  and  vintage,  he  must  leave 
the  gleanmgs  "for  the  poor  and  stranger";!  that  he 
must  not  withhold  a  laborer's  wages  so  much  as  a  day 
beyond  that  when  they  have  been  earned ;  that  he  must 
not  revile  the  deaf,  who  cannot '  hear  his  insult,  nor  put 

•  Lev.  xix.  19.  See  Maimonides,  "  More  Nebochim,"  pars  3,  cap.  37, 
pp.  447,  451;  Spencer,  «De  Legibus"  &c.,  lib.  2,  cap.  18,  §  2,  cap.  21, 
§  3.  The  same  writer  (cap.  20)  puts  a  similar  construction  on  the  first 
clause  of  xix.  19 ;  but  the  view  is  in  this  case  not  so  well  sustained  by 
authorities.  Foster,  "De  Bysso  Antiquorum,"  (pp.  92-100,)  explains  the 
last  precept  in  this  verse  by  reference  to  costly  Egyptian  garments,  em- 
broidered with  superstitious  hieroglyphics.  —  The  derivation  of  the  word, 
in  verse  26,  rendered  in  our  version  "  enchantments,"  points  to  a  kind  of 
divination  in  use  in  ancient  times,  founded  on  the  movements  of  serpents, 
respecting  which,  see  Bochart's  "  Hierozoicon,"  pars  1,  lib.  1,  cap.  3, 
p.  21.  The  latter  part  of  the  same  verse  seems  to  refer  to  auguries 
drawn  from  observation  on  the  heavenly  bodies.  "  Compare  Jer.  x.  2.  All 
kinds  of  divination  and  magic  connected  themselves  with  idolatry,  and 
to  this  class  of  rules  also  belongs  verse  31.  —  For  explanations  of  the 
four  prohibitions  in  verses  27,  28,  showing  that  their  object  wa^  of  the 
same  kind,  see  Spencer,  "  De  Legibus "  &c.,  lib,  2,  cap.  12,  13, 14,  25. 
Compare  Herod,  lib.  2,  §  36,  lib.  3,  §  8 ;  Jer.  xvi.  6 ;  xli.  5 ;  xlviii.  37.  — 
Verse  29  forbids  the  service  of  prostitution  at  idol  temples.  For  authori- 
ties, showing  the  extent  of  that  practice,  see  Spencer,  lib.  2,  cap.  22, 

\  Lev.  xix.  9, 10. 


XIII.]  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.  — XXVII.  34.  293 

any  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  blind,  who  is  defence- 
less against  his  mischief;  that,  in  a  sternly  upright  ad- 
ministration of  justice,  he  must  neither  be  moved  by 
compassion  for  the  poor,  nor  reverence  for  the  great ; 
that  he  must  avoid  being  the  cause  of  those  dissen- 
sions, which  are  bred  by  a  heedless  volubility  of  tongue ; 
that  he  must  be  honest  enough  to  testify  friendship  by 
the  unwelcome  office  of  reproof;*  that  he  must  "rise 
up  before  the  hoary  head,  and  honor  the  face  of  the  old 
man  ; "  that  he  must  not  use  his  power  to  vex  a  stran- 
ger, but  remember  the  past  condition  of  his  own  people, 
and  learn  to  regard  a  stranger  as  a  friend  ;  that  he 
must  be  scrupulously  honest  in  his  deaUngs  ;  that, 
finally,  he  must  propose  to-himself  the  highest  standard 
of  social  morality,  aiming  to  love  his  neighbour  as  him- 
self.t  It  is  impossible  to  give  the  slightest  attention  to 
these  rules,  and  still  maintain  any  such  error,  as  that  the 
Jewish  Law  was  a  mere  code  of  outward  observances, 
having  no  reference  to  the  cultivation  of  a  benevolent 
spirit,  or  the  harmony  and  happiness  of  the  social  state. | 
The  twentieth  chapter  does  not  contain  a  mere  repe- 
tition of  laws  previously  announced,  as  might,  at  first 

•  Lev.  xix.  13-  17.  t  xix.  y2-36,  18. 

I  Verses  20-22  merely  prescribe  the  punishment  of  adultery  with  a 
bond-woman  or  concubine.  Compare  xx.  10,  which  treats  of  the  case  of 
adultery  with  a  wife. — The  passage,  23-25,  is  of  uncertain  sense. 
Maimonides,  «  More  Nebochim,"  pars  3,  cap.  37,  pp.  449,  450,  testifies  to 
an  idolatrous  practice,  to  which  he  understands  this  law  to  be  opposed, 
of  dedicating  part,  and  eating  another  part,  of  the  first-fruits  which  a  tree 
bore,  in  the  temples.  See  also  Spencer,  lib.  2,  cap.  24,  §  2.  —  Michaelis 
finds  here  only  an  economical  arrangement.  If,  he  says,  the  proprietor  is 
not  allowed  to  eat  the  fruit  of  a  tree  while  it  is  young,  if,  to  use  the  Mo- 
saic expression,  it  is  to  him  "  as  uncircumcised,"  he  will  pinch  off  the 
blossoms,  and  this  is  a  practice  of  modern  agriculturists  to  give  a  tree 
strength  (compare  verse  25).  The  command  has  a  prospective  view  to 
the  settlement  in  Canaan  (23),  but  Moses  was  never  to  enter  Canaan 
himself,  and  we  might  naturally  expect  to  find  him  giving  such  directions 
beforehand,  whenever  they  occurred  to  his  mind.  See  Michaelis  "  Com- 
mentaries "  &c.,  book  4,  chap.  5,  §  4. 


294  LEVITICUS  XVI.   1— XXVII.  34.  [LECT. 

view,  appear.  The  appropriate  subject  of  the  chapter 
is,  the  denunciation  of  penahies  against  the  violation  of 
those  laws  respectively.  A  crime,  for  instance,  simply 
forbidden  in  the  last  chapter  but  one,  is  now  declared 
to  be  punishable  with  stoning.*  Reverence  for  parents, 
had  been  before  inculcated ;  outrage  offered  to  them  is 
now  declared  to  be  a  capital  offence  ;t  and  so  in  other 
instances.!  On  the  nature  of  the  punishments  speci- 
fied, I  shall  remark  in  another  place.  I  only  observe 
further  here,  that  there  appears  a  great  propriety  in  the 
order  adopted";  viz.  the  prohibition  of  certain  acts  in 
the  first  instance,  and  then,  when  Ihere  had  been  a 
little  time  to  reflect  on  their  nature  and  criminality,  the 
specification  of  punishments  which  were  to  follow  upon 
their  commission. 

The  purport  of  the  regulations  in  the  twenty-first  and 
twenty-second  chapters,  is  obviously  to  secure  the  de- 
cency of  public  worship,  and  so  attach  a  greater  rever- 
ence to  the  sacerdotal  character  and  office,  and  the 
religious  ceremonial.  In  his  peculiar  consecration  to 
public  cares,  the  priest  must  not  allow  himself  in  indul- 

*  Compare  Lev.  xviii.  21;  xx.  2.  Verses  3-5  I  understand  as  fol- 
lows ;  Whoever  is  guilty  of  this  sin,  thus  offering  an  affront  to  my  Taber- 
nacle, which  is  in  the  midst  of  the  nation,  and  dishonoring  my  name,  I 
command  that  he  shall  be  cut  off;  and  if  his  family,  or  his  neighbours, 
instead  of  informing  against  his  crime,  and  taking  part  in  its  punishment, 
should  connive  at,  and  conceal  it,  I  declare  them  to  be  accessaries,  and 
command  that  they  be  cut  off  also. 

f  xix.  3  ;  XX.  9.  In  this  instance,  however,  we  have  but  a  repetition  of 
Ex.  xxi.  17. 

X  Upon  the  peculiar  provision  in  verses  15,  16,  Priestley  well  remarks 
as  follows  ;  "  Every  thing  connected  with  the  idea  of  the  crime  was  to  be 
removed  out  of  the  way,  and  with  every  sign  of  detestation."  "  Notes  *' 
&c.,  p.  248.  —  »  They  shall  die  childless,"  Lev.  xx.  20,  21.  These  words 
might  be  interpreted ;  Do  not  suffer  the  children  of  such  an  unlawful 
union  to  live  ;  take  care  that  the  very  memory  of  it  shall  perish.  But  I 
understand  them  to  mean  simply,  that  the  parents  of  only  such  children 
shall  be  without  offspring,  that  can  be  registered  as  theirs ;  in  other  words, 
that  such  children  shall  be  illegitimate. 


XIII.]  LEVITICUS  XVL  1.  — XXVII.  34.  295 

gences  of  private  feeling,  which  are  suitable  for  other 
men;  and  only  on  the  death  of  his  nearest  relations,  may- 
he  retire  from  his  sacred  functions  for  the  ceremonies 
of  mourning,*  taking  care  then  not  to  fall  into  practices 
in  use  among  idolaters  on  such  occasions.!  The  duty 
of  the  high-priest  is  stricter  still.  He  is  all  consecrated 
to  Heaven.  On  no  occasion  whatever  may  he  con- 
tract the  ritual  impurity  incident  to  mourning,  even 
though  his  bereavement  should  have  been  of  father  or 
mother.J  A  priest  must  not  marry  an  unchaste  or  a 
divorced  woman;  and  of  such  public  concern  is  the 
reputation  of  his  family,  that  his  daughter  who  should 
disgrace  him  by  impurity  is  to  suffer  the  severest  penal- 
ty known  to  the  law.§  The  high-priest,  further,  must 
not  marry  a  widow ;  and  any  personal  blemish  inca- 
pacitated for  the  priestly  office ;  a  rule  necessary,  in  the 
existing  degree  of  ciilture  of  the  people,  to  prevent 
degrading  or  ludicrous  associations  from  impairing  the 
solemn  impressiveness  of  the  ritual.  ||  To  engage  in 
sacerdotal  functions,  or  so  much  as  feast  upon  the  offer- 
ings, when  affected  with  any  ritual  uncleanness,  is  a 
crime  punishable  with  death.  H  So  separate  from  others 
are  the  sacerdotal  families  to  be,  that  no  guest  or  hired 
servant  of  a  priest  may  partake  of  the  offerings  which 
supply  his  table ;  and,  if  a  priest's  daughter  marry  into 
another  tribe,  not  only  may  she  not  bring  her  husband 
to  his  table,  when  furnished  with  the  "holy  things,"  but 
she  may  not  come  to  it  herself,  during  her  married  state, 
nor  even  in  widowhood,  nor  after  divorce,  unless,  being 

*  Lev.  xxi.  1-6. 

f  A  similar  prohibition  had  been  before  addressed  to  the  people  at  large. 
See  xix.  27,  28. 

X  xxi.  10-12.  §  xxi.  7,9. 

II  xxi.  13-24.  The  priest,  however,  did  not  lose  (22),  through  his  person- 
al misfortune,  his  hereditary  right  to  a  share  of  the  sacerdotal  perquisites. 

II  xxii.  1-9. 


296  LEVITICUS  XVL  1.  — XXVn.  34.  [LECT. 

without  children,  she  is  in  a  condition  to  withdraw  en- 
tirely from  the  ties  of  her  matrimonial  alliance,  and 
resume  all  the  relations  of  her  youth.*  On  the  other 
hand,  as  these  laws  against  the  eating,  by  unqualified 
persons,  of  what  had  been  offered  in  sacrifice,  were 
hable  to  be  unintentionally  violated,  provision  is  made 
for  the  acquitJtal  of  the  person  who  should  have  com- 
mitted such  an  error,  when  he  should  have  restored  an 
equivalent  to  what  he  had  consumed,  and  added  a  fifth 
part  more,  to  teach  him  greater  caution  for  the  future.f 
Victi^is  must  be  without  personal  blemish  for  a  similar 
reason  to  that,  which  had  dictated  the  same  regulation 
respecting  the  priest.J  In  this  connexion,  a  further  ex- 
tension is  given  to  a  rule  before  announced  respecting 
victims,  calculated  to  teach  the  sentiment  of  compassion 
for  the  brute  creation.^  And,  lastly,  a  rule  already 
given  respecting  the  consumption  of  Thank  Offerings 
before  the  third  day,  is  here  repeated,  apparently  for 
the  purpose  of  urging  its  observance  in  a  still  stricter 
form  upon  the  priests,  who  are  directed  to  take  care 
that  none  of  it  shall  be  left  even  till  the  day  subsequent 
to  the  sacrifice.  II 

The  twenty-third  chapter  has  something  of  the  same 
character  which  was  ascribed  to  part  of  the  nineteenth, 
containing  a  republication  of  certain  laws.     The  laws 

•  Lev.  xxii.  10-  la  t  xxii.  14  -  la 

X  xxii.  17-24.  But  an  animal  not  fit  to  be  sacrificed,  (23,)  might  be  fit 
for  a  present  to  the  priest  —  Verse  25  supposes  the  case  of  offerings  pre- 
sented at  the  Tabernacle  by  strangers  sojourning  in  the  nation,  as  a  mark 
of  respect  to  the  divinity,  whose  protection  they  were  enjoying. 

§  xxiu  26-28.  Compare  Ex.  xxii.  30.  On  verse  28  Maimonides  re- 
marks, that  it  was  designed  to  prevent  the  e^laughter  of  the  young  "  in  the 
presence  of  the  dam ;  because  tliis  occasions  to  animals  extreme  grief; 
nor  is  there,  in  this  respect,  a  difference  between  the  distress  of  man  and 
that  of  the  irrational  creation."  —  "  More  Nebochim,"  pars  3,  cap.  49, 
p.  496. 

II  Lev.  zxiL  29,  30.    Compare  vii.  16. 


Xm.]  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.  — XXVII.  34.  297 

relating  to  the  annual  fast,  the  feast  of  trumpets,  and 
the  three  great  annual  festivals,  are  here  all  brought 
together  in  one  view,  in  their  chronological  order,  along 
with  the  law  of  the  Sabbath ;  and  additions  to  the  cere- 
monial, as  before  prescribed,  are  interspersed.  It  is  now 
ordained,  that  each  day  of  the  passover  week  shall  be 
solemnized  by  a  Burnt  Offering,  and  a  peculiar  service 
is  appointed  for  the  second  day  of  the  feast.*  Every 
Israelite,  after  the  settlement  in  Canaan,  is  to  bring  to 
the  priest  a  single  sheaf  of  the  first-fruits  of  his  har- 
vest ;  and  until  he  has  made  this  dedication,  he  may 
appropriate  no  part  of  his  produce  to  his  own  use. 
Again  ;  the  manner  of  determining  the  day  of  Pente- 
cost, which  before  had  only  been  hinted  at,t  is  ex- 
plained, and  the  appropriate  ceremonies  of  that  festival 
are  prescribed  in  much  fuller  detail.  J  The  offering  of 
the  citizen  is  then  to  be  two  leavened  loaves  of  fine 
fiour.^  The  Burnt  Offering  of  a  lamb,  with  its  Meat 
and  Drink  Offering  on  the  first  of  these  occasions,  and 
the  Burnt  Offering  of  seven  yearling  lambs,  a  bullock 
and  two  rams,  with  the  same  accompaniment,  the  Sin 
Offering  of  a  kid,  and  the  Peace  Offering  of  two  year- 
ling lambs,  at  the  Pentecost,  were  to  be  presented  by 
the  priest,  at  the  public  expense,  to  give  greater  solem- 
nity to  the  occasion,  and  not  required  of  each  citizen.  || 

•  Lev.  xxUi.  3-14.  The  "Sabbath,"  mentioned  in  verse  II,  is  the 
first  day  of  the  Passover,  which  was  to  be  kept  like  a  Sabbath,  (compare 
verses  7,  32,)  with  one  only  exception.  (Compare  Ex.  xii.  16  ;  xxxv,  3.) 
The  sheaf  (10)  would  be  of  barley,  that  being  the  grain  which  ripens  first 
in  Palestine.    Compare  Ex.  xxxiv.  26. 

f  Ex.  xxiii.  16 ;  xxxiv.  22. 

I  Lev.  xxiii.  15-21.  —  Verse  22,  a  repetition  of  xix.  9,  10,  seems  very 
properly  placed  here,  to  give  the  citizen  an  annual  admonition,  at  the 
season  when  his  harvest  labor  was  beginning. 

§  That  is,  made  from  the  first-fruits  of  the  wheat-harvest,  xxiii.  20. 
Compare  Ex.  xxxiv.  22. 

II  I  do  not  know  that  the  opposite  opinion  has  ever  been  entertained. 

VOL.  I.  38 


298  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.  — XXVII.  34.  [LECT. 

—  The  Feast  of  Trumpets,  commonly  so  called,  was 
now  for  the  first  time  instituted,  being  merely  a  holiday 
commemoration  of  the  beginning  of  the  civil  year,  sancti- 
fied by  the  offering  of  a  holocaust.*  —  The  ceremonies 
of  the  Day  of  Atonement,  before  enlarged  upon,  are 
now  more  briefly  described,  with  a  specification  of  the 
hour  when  it  was  to  begin  and  end,  and  of  the  punish- 
ment which  was  to  follow  on  a  violation  of  its  sacred- 
ness.f  —  And  finally,  the  purpose  and  the  solemnities 
of  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles,  which,  as  well  as  that  of 
Pentecost,  had  before  been  no  more  than  mentioned,t 
are  described  at  length.  Towards  the  end  of  every 
year,  the  Israelites,  for  one  week,  the  third  week  of  the 
month  Tisri,  corresponding  to  our  September,  were  to 
dwell  in  booths,  in  memory  of  the  migration  from  Egypt ; 
while  every  day  Burnt  Offerings  were  to  be  presented 
at  the  place  of  the  national  worship.^  The  picturesque 
accompaniments  of  this  festival,  independently  of  its  his- 
torical associations,  must  have  rendered  it  an  occasion 
of  the  strongest  interest.  The  reason  of  the  commemo- 
ration being  placed  at  the  close  of  the  fruitage  and 
vintage  would  appear  to  be,  that  this  was  a  time  of 
general  leisure,  and  would  naturally  be  a  time  of  pre- 
vailing disposition  for  festivity,  which  it  was  on  all  ac- 
counts fit  that  the  national  religion  should  regulate,  and 
turn  to  its  own  uses. 

The  beginning  of  the  twenty-fourth  chapter  is  occu- 

The  enormous  cost,  and  unmanageable  number  of  victims,  which  it  would 
imply,  alone  present  a  consideration  sufficient  to  refute  it  —  Also ;  if  each 
citizen  was  bound  to  render  such  an  expensive  tribute,  the  arrangement 
which  places  his  gifts  of  a  single  sheaf,  in  the  one  case  (10),  and  two 
loaves  in  the  other  (17),  before  his  richer  presents,  would  be  altogether 
unnatural. —  Once  more;  it  is  said  of  the  priest  (11),  "Ac  shall  wave," 
&c.,  and  io  him  ( 12),  "ye  shall  offer,  when  yt  wave,"  &c. 
•  Lev,  xxiii.  23-25.  t  xxiii.  26-32.    Compare  xvL 

X  Ex.  xxiii.  16 ;  xxxiv.  22.  §  Lev.  xxiii.  33-43. 


XIII.]  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.-- XX VII.  34.  299 

pied  with  directions  respecting  the  keeping  up  of  thfe 
flame  of  the  lamp,  which,  as  the  Tabernacle  had  no 
window,  afforded  its  only  light,  and  the  weekly  exhibi- 
tion of  the  shew-bread  in  the  holy  place.  From  the 
sacredness  of  the  place,  the  former  (and  I  think  also 
the  latter,  though  this  is  not  so  clear)  was  now  ordain- 
ed to  be  the  high-priest's  own  charge;*  whether  by 
personal  service,  or  by  responsible  supervision  merely, 
does  not  appear ;  the  latter  may  be  thought  most  proba- 
ble. The  particulars  of  the  use  of  the  table  of  shew- 
bread,  are  now  first  mentioned.!  It  is  probably  called 
"  the  pure  table,"  in  distinction  from  the  altar  of  incense 
standing  near,  which  was  also  covered  with  pure  gold, 
but  was  spotted,  according  to  the  ritual,  with  the  blood 
of  victims. 

In  the  next  passage,  we  have  one  of  the  very  few 
portions  of  history,  which  are  found  in  the  book  of  Le- 
viticus, being  the  first  which  has  occurred,  since  the 
relation,  in  the  tenth  chapter,  of  the  sin  and  punishment 
of  Nadab  and  Abihu.J  The  son  of  an  Israelitish  woman, 
but  of  an  Egyptian  father,  had,  in  his  passion,  blasphem- 
ed Jehovah's  name.  For  a  person,  to  all  intents  a  for- 
eigner, to  blaspheme  the  God  and  King  of  the  nation, 
whose  hospitality  he  was  enjoying,  would  have  been  an 
act  of  the  boldest  outrage,  and  of  the  most  pernicious 
example ;  and,  even  had  it  been  otherwise,  the  individual 
in  question,  being  descended  from  the  Israelitish  race, 

*  Lev.  xxiv.  1-4.    Compare  Ex.  xxviL  20,  21. 

f  Lev.  xxiv.  5-9.  They  have  been  already  described ;  see  pp.  207, 
208.  Compare  Ex.  xxv.  30.  The  bread,  when  stale,  was  to  be  eaten  by 
the  priests,  the  servants  of  the  place,  as  being  too  sacred  to  be  thrown 
away,  or  put  to  any  common  use.  It  is  probable,  that  the  burning  of  the 
frankincense  (7)  took  place  when  the  pile  of  bread  on  which  it  stood  was 
removed,  in  order  to  a  weekly  purification  of  the  air. 

X  Lev.  xxiv.  10-  16.  It  will  not  escape  remark,  that  the  occurrence  of 
such  historical  passages,  in  the  midst  of  a  code  of  laws,  is  a  fact  accord- 
ing with  the  journal  character  which  I  have  ascribed  to  these  books. 


300  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.- XXVII.  34.  [LECT. 

and,  as  such,  living  among  them,  was  manifestly  enough 
subject  to  all  obligations  under  which  that  people  lay. 
I  cannot,  therefore,  think  that  the  reason  of  the  delay 
in  the  proceedings  against  him  was  the  existence  of  any 
doubt  respecting  the  aggravated  character  of  his  offence. 
The  points  upon  which  Moses  desired  still  to  ascertain 
"  the  mind  of  the  Lord,"  were,  in  what  manner  he  should 
be  put  to  death,  and  with  what  formalities  his  execu- 
tion should  be  attended,  in  order  to  give  it  the  most 
effect  as  an  example ;  and  respecting  these,  accordingly, 
he  received  instructions.*    The  first  punishment,  as  far 
as  we  know,  which  had  occurred  for  this  offence,  natu- 
rally brought  up  the  question,  how  a  foreigner  should 
be  dealt  with,  if  he  were  guilty  of  it ;  and  thereupon 
the  law  was  promulgated,  that,  while  a  person  not  an 
Israelite,    who    should    curse    his    God,    should    bear 
his  own   sin,  that  is,  incur  whatever  responsibility  his 
own  conscience  or  his    associates  might  enforce,  (the 
Mosaic  Law  having  no  concern  with  him,)  the  person, 
stranger  as  w^U  as  Israelite,  who  should  speak  irrever- 
ently of  Jehovah,  should  be  stoned  to  death  by  the 
assembled  nation.f    The  connexion,  with  this  incident, 
of  the  following  passage,!   a  connexion  which  is  not 
altogether  obvious  at  first  view,  I  take  to  be  this ;  that 
in  other  particulars  of  criminal  law,  as  well  as  that  lately 
brought  into  question,  the  relations  of  a  foreigner  and  a 
native  were  to  be  the  same.    The  penalties  prescribed 
for  the  protection  and  the  restraint  of  the  citizen,  were 
to  affect  equally  a  stranger  within  the  Israelitish  borders. 
The  assertion  of  that  principle  naturally  leads  to  a  brief 
recital  of  some  of  those  penalties ;  but  they  belong  to 
a  subject  which  is  to  come  before  us  in  another  con- 
nexion. 

•  Lev.  xxiv.  14.  f  *^iv.  16. 

X  xxiv.  17-22.  The  connexion  which  I  suggest,  is  indicated  in  verse  22. 


XIII.]  LEVITICUS  XVI.   1.  — XXVII.   34.  301 

Two  remarkable  institutions,  the  latter,  especially, 
having  large  relations  to  the  whole  frame  of  the  Jewish 
social  state,  make  the  subject  of  the  twenty-fifth  chap- 
ter ;  viz.  the  Sabbatical  Year,  and  the  Year  of  Jubilee, 
occurring  at  the  close  of  every  half-century.  In  respect 
to  the  first,  it  has  probably  been  the  common  opinion, 
that,  as  long  as  the  Israelites  should  be  faithful  in  the 
observance  of  the  institution,  it  was  designed  and  prom- 
ised by  God,  that  through  their  whole  national  existence, 
every  year  preceding  the  sabbatical  should  be  distin- 
guished by  a  miraculous  fertility.  A  different  view, 
adopted  by  several  modern  commentators,  has  been,  that 
the  sabbatical  year  was  chiefly  designed  for  an  economi- 
cal arrangement,  to  guard  against  any  possible  pressure 
of  famine,  in  a  period  when  commerce  could  do  Uttle 
by  way  of  providing  supphes  in  an  unexpected  emer- 
gency, and  among  a  people  for  whom  it  was  further 
designed  that  commerce  should  do  nothing.  Even  in 
these  modern  times,  when  commercial  interchanges  do 
so  much  towards  averting  any  such  calamity,  communi- 
ties are  in  danger  of  a  scarcity  of  provisions,  the  con- 
sequence of  an  unfavorable  year.  In  most  well-organ- 
ized societies  of  a  dense  population,  provision  is  carefully 
made  against  such  a  disaster  at  the  public  cost.  In  the 
great  capitals  of  Europe,  granaries  are  to  be  seen,  where 
the  superfluity  of  one  season  is  laid  up  against  the 
possible  exigencies  of  another.  That  which  modern 
governments  do  very  inadequately,  with  great  cost  in 
the  provision,  and  great  waste  of  the  thing  provided,  in 
consequence  of  its  exposure  to  injury  in  large  accumu- 
lations, the  Mosaic  law,  it  is  thought,  did,  by  a  sim- 
ple provision,  economically,  effectually,  and  universally. 
Looking  forward  to  a  year  never  distant,  when  his  re- 
ligion would  forbid  him  to  continue  the  labors  of  tillage, 
the  Jewish  farmer  would  be  always  practising  a  certain 


302  LEVITICUS  XVI.   1— XXVII.  34.  [LECT. 

frugality  in  the  use  of  his  annual  produce,  that  he  and 
his  might  be  the  more  abundantly  provided  against  that 
coming  time.  The  stores  thus  laid  up  on  every  estate, 
would  not  only,  in  a  time  of  scarcity,  be  found  univer- 
sally diffused,  precluding  the  necessity  of  cost  in  their 
transportation,  but,  in  these  more  numerous  smaller  col- 
lections, and  under  the  management  each  of  its  own 
owner,  they  would  be  protected  in  a  thousand  ways 
against  occasions  of  waste,  which  no  care  of  public  su- 
perintendence would  sufficiently  obstruct.  Habits  of 
forethought,  calculation,  industry,  and  thrift,  again,  could 
not  but  grow  up,  under  the  operation  of  such  a  motive, 
which  would  extend  their  influence  over  the  whole 
character.  When  the  sabbatical  year  came,  the  land, 
untilled,  would  recruit  itself  for  a  more  vigorous  fertili- 
ty ;  *  and  meanwhile,  the  year  would  not  be  altogether 
barren ;  for  the  vine  and  the  olive,  for  instance,  two  great 
products  of  Palestine,  are  not  the  products  of  a  single 
season,  nor  would  the  supplies  of  "milk  and  honey" 
be  affected. 

All  the  influence  which  would  be  exerted  by  such 
an  institution  on  individual  and  social  habits,  could  only 
be  known  through  a  much  better  acquaintance  than  we 
possess  with  the  customs  and  tastes  of  the  nation.  I 
may  remark,  however,  that  it  by  no  means  follows,  that 
because  the  proprietor  must  not  till,  he  must,  therefore, 

•  So,  at  least,  understood  the  Jewish  commentators.  R  g.  Maimonides 
("More  Nebochim,"  pars  3,  cap.  39,  p.  454)  mentions,  .as  one  of  the 
uses  of  the  institution,  "  ut  terra  ita  deserta  et  relicta  tant6  uberiores 
fiructus  proferat."  And  the  same  was  the  opinion  of  Philo,  as  expressed 
in  a  passage  which  is  too  long  to  quote,  but  which  may  be  found  extract- 
ed by  Eusebius,  in  his  "  Prseparatio  Evangelica,"  lib.  8,  cap.  7,  ad  calc. 
But  I  am  not  agriculturist  enough  to  know,  whether  this  view  can  be 
maintained,  particularly  as  the  method  oi  fallowing  by  ploughing  and 
manuring,  as  practised  before  the  introduction  of  the  now  more  approved 
system  of  rotation  of  crops,  may  be  thought  to  be  inconsistent  with  the 
direction  in  verses  6,  7. 

'  ,>  A- 


XIII.]  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.  — XXVII.  34.  303 

be  unoccupied.  He  might  not  only  employ  himself, 
during  this  reserved  season,  in  other  labors  for  the  im- 
provement of  his  estate,  but  on  every  account  it  might 
be  desirable  that  he  should  have  an  uninterrupted  oppor- 
tunity for  such  employment.  It  is  likely  that  the  com- 
parative leisure  would  be  devoted  by  many  to  a  variety 
of  salutary  pursuits,  of  a  nature  to  re-invigorate  the 
strength,  to  unbend,  cultivate,  and  civilize  the  mind, 
and  knit  stronger  the  social  ties.  A  use  of  this  latter 
kind  could  not  fail  to  be  served,  by  the  liberty  now  en- 
joyed by  all  alike  to  take  their  share  in  what  they  found 
growing  spontaneously ;  while  this  freedom  could  not 
but  excite  in  the  minds  of  all  a  feeling  vigorously  pro- 
motive of  love  of  country,  —  the  feeling,  namely,  that 
the  whole  Israelitish  soil  was  in  some  sort  a  common 
domain.* 

*  I  find  no  difficulty,  in  the  view  of  the  institution,  presented  above,  aris- 
ing from  any  inadequacy  of  the  produce  of  six  years  to  afford  sustenance  to 
the  people  for  seven.  To  say  that  this  was  intended,  would  merely  be 
to  say,  tliat  the  design  was,  that  the  consumption  of  each  year  should  only 
amount,  on  an  average,  to  six  sevenths  of  its  produce.  In  such  an  ar- 
rangement, it  cannot  be  thought,  that  there  was  any  thing  impracticable. 
There  are  States  of  this  Union,  which  export  yearly  more  than  half  their 
produce,  and  subsist,  substantially,  on  the  remainder,  their  imports  con- 
sisting mostly  of  luxuries.  Again ;  in  England  nearly  three  quarters  of  the 
families  are  engaged  in  commerce,  manufactures,  professions,  and  unpro- 
ductive pursuits ;  the  whole  population  is  fed  by  the  agricultural  labors  of 
less  than  one  third  of  its  number.  But,  in  Judsea,  every  man  was  a  pro- 
ducer of  food,  with  the  advantage  of  a  fine  climate  and  rich  soil.  The  di- 
vision of  the  land  into  small  farms  required  a  careful  agriculture,  which, 
accordingly,  we  find  to  have  been  practised,  cultivation  having  been  carried 
high  up  the  sides  of  mountains.  And  what  it  produced  was  mostly  food  for 
man,  the  climate  requiring  less  clothing  than  is  necessary  in  the  northern 
latitudes  ;  the  demand  for  fuel  being  so  small  as  to  require  little  land  to 
be  reserved,  for  that  supply,  from  tillage  ;  and  the  horse,  which  consumes 
80  large  a  portion  of  the  products  of  the  soil  in  Europe,  being  very  little 
used  in  that  country. 

Nor  would  corn  be  exposed  to  any  great  waste,  fi*om  being  kept  as  this 
theory  supposes.  Of  course^  the  cultivator,  who  proposed  to  use,  from 
year  to  year,  only  a  portion  of  his  crop,  would  make  his  arrangement  to 
consume  the  stores  which  lay  by  him,  in  such  succession  as  to  obviate 


304  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.  — XXVII.  34.  [LECT. 

In  the  institution  of  the  Jubilee  year,  again,  is  to  be 
seen  the  strong  hold  of  a  universal  freedom  and  equality. 
Even  if  the  citizen  became  a  slave,  at  the  beginning  of 
that  year  his  liberty  was  restored.     Even  if,  falling  into 

the  danger  of  natural  dec,ay.  If  his  plan  Avas,  for  instance,  to  consume, 
each  year,  six  seventh  parts  of  what  he  could  command,  he  would  take 
on  one  year  five  sixth  parts  of  his  provision  from  the  produce  of  that  year, 
and  one  sixth  part  from  the  produce  of  the  preceding ;  on  the  next,  he 
would  take  two  third  parts  from  its  own  harvest,  and  one  third  from  the 
preceding,  and  so  on ;  so  that  the  grain,  which  at  any  time  lay  by  him, 
Would  be  of  recent  growth,  and  none  be  kept  long  enough  to  spoil. 

Says  our  version  (21),  "I  will  command  my  blessing  upon  you  in  the 
sixth  year,  and  it  shall  bring  forth  food  for  three  years."  Michaelis, 
{"  Commentaries  "  &c.,  book  3,  chap.  2,  §  74,)  who  thinks  that  the  mean- 
ing was,  that  the  produce  of  six  years,  and  not  of  the  sixth  year,  should 
furnish  the  needed  supply,  supposes  the  text  of  Moses  to  have  been  in  this 
place  corrupted.  But  I  see  no  occasion  for  tliat  supposition.  The  follow- 
ing is  a  perfectly  justifiable  version  of  the  words,  as  they  stand.  "  At 
[or  against]  the  sixth  year,  I  will  have  commanded  my  blessing  upon  you, 
and  it  shall  afford  [that  is,  by  its  accumulation]  food  for  three  years,"  To 
any  one  acquainted  with  Hebrew,  it  would  be  unnecessary  to  say,  that 
that  language,  like  the  Greek,  has  no  forms  corresponding  to  our  com- 
pound tenses  ;  so  that,  in  saying,  "  I  shall  have  done  "  a  thing,  the  phrase 
is  the  same,  as  if  the  meaning  were,  "  I  shall  do  "  it  Compare  Deut. 
▼i.  10. 

It  has  been  further  thought,  that  the  regulations  of  the  Sabbatical  Year 
would  tend  to  invite  back  %ame  (7),  which  the  careful  agriculture  of  the 
other  years  might  otherwise  have  entirely  expelled ;  to  encourage  emi- 
grants from  Judea  to  return,  through  the  facility  of  obtaining  provisions 
to  meet  their  immediate  wants ;  and,  by  relieving  the  expense  of  journey- 
ing, to  lead  to  habits,  which  would  bring  the  tribes  to  a  better  mutual 
acquaintance,  and  amalgamate  them  into  one  state ; —  all  which  views 
seem  to  be  not  unreasonable. 

■  But,  after  all,  I  cannot  forbear  to  express  the  doubt  which  I  entertain, 
whether  the  ground  of  these  different  speculations  is  solid.  I  find  my- 
self unable  positively  to  conclude,  from  the  brief  notices  of  this  institu- 
tion, (Ex.  xxiii.  10,  11 ;  Lev.  xxv.  1-7,  20-22,)  that  tillage  was  forbidden 
by  the  Law  on  every  seventh  year.  With  diffidence,  as  I  have  nowhere 
seen  a  hint  of  the  kind,  I  submit  the  question,  whether  the  rule  was 
intended  to  go  further  than  this  ;  that,  on  every  seventh  year,  the  proprie- 
tor should  resign  the  exclusive  occupation  of  his  land ;  that  on  that  year 
he  should  not  alone  till  it  and  reap  its  harvest ;  that  it  was  to  be  so  far 
in  common,  as  that  the  use  of  part  of  it  must  be  granted  to  others  who 
might  ask  the  privilege,  to  servants,  for  instance,  to  strangers,  to  return- 
ing emigrants,  as  well  as  that,  in  the   generous  spirit  of  the  season, 


XIII.]  .  LEVITICUS  XVI.   1.— XXVII.  34.  306 

poverty,  he  had  alienated  his  patrimonial  estate,  he  or 
his  postefrity  infallibly  recovered  it,  as  soon  as  that  year 
arrived.  Here  is  the  Jewish  law  of  entails.  Every 
Jewish  citizen  was,  by  virtue  of  his  citizenship,  a  pro- 
prietor. He  cOukl,  by  no  possibility^  estrange  his  landed 
property  any  further  than,  by  wjiat  we,- in  these  days, 
should  call^a  lease ;  a  lease  which  could  not,  in  any  event, 

»— *- * J ; 

aiumals,  domestic  and  unt^Lined,  shouM  be  allowed  their  share  of  its  pro- 
ductions. According  to  a  ■vtell-known  rule  of  Scripture  interpretation, 
an  ellipsis  of  the  woV'd  corresponding  to  **  only,"  is  pften  to  be  un(Jerstood. 
See  Glass's  "Philologia  Sacra,"  lib.  3,  tra^t»  5,  can.  22.  CompareMatt.  i. 
20;  Acts  V.  4;  Eph.  vL  12J  And  this  is  clearlj  the  case  in  part  of  the 
rule  before  us.  It  is  not  said  more  positively  (4),  "Thou  shalt  neither 
sow  thy  field,  nor  prune  thy  vineyard,."  than  it  is  said  (5),  "Thou  shalt  not 
reap."  .  Yet  in  this  latter  case,  it  is  cigar  that  we  are  to  understand, 
"  Thou  shalt  not  reap"  alont,  exclusively ;  for  we  presently  read  (6),  "The 
sabbath  of  thy  land  shall  be  meat  for  you."  If  we  must  needs  under- 
stand such  an  ellipsis  in  the  latter  case,  why  not  in  the  former? 

I  wish  I  had  Space  for  a  more  detailed  examination  of  these  passages, 
as  I  think  I  could  present  considerations  giving  much  probability  to  the 
view  last  suggested.     HDX,  for  idstance,  in  Ex.  xxiii.  10, 1  would  repre- 
s^t  as  an  emphatic  word,  taking  it  in  its  piSmitive  sense  'of  "  to  scrape 
together,"  quasi  "  to  hoard  penuriously,"  and  thus  as  antithetical  to  the 
liberal   communication  which  was  tl)e   distinction  of  the   seventh  year. 
So,  in  the  next  verse  03*^  and  t7a^  have  not  so  much  the  sense  of  "  to 
let  rest,  and  lie  still,"  which  is  but  a  translation  adapted  to  the  common 
theory,  as  of  "to  release,  and  abandon,'"  or  communicate,  or  permit.     So 
it  is  by  force  of  the  general  interpretation  which  has  been  put  upon  the 
passage,  that  rt'Sp,  in  Lev.  xxv.  5,  is  rendered,  "that  which  groweth  of 
its  own  accord."     It  is  a  noun  derived  from  the  verb  n^D,  he  poured  out, 
and  is  naturally  understood  of  profuse  production  of  any  kind ;  nor  can  the 
idea  of  spontaneous  growth  be.  safely  inferred  from  any  of  the  contexts 
in  which  it  appears.    Compare  Lev.  xxv.  14  ;  2  Kings  xix.  29;  Is.  xxxvii. 
30 ;  Job  xiv.  19.  —  Again  ;  there  is  a  peculiar  expression  in  Lev.  xxv.  5, 
aTj3  'pv;^,  which  has  much  perplexed   the   commentators.     It  means, 
literally,  "the   grapes  of  thy  JVazarite,"  or  "sequestered,"  "devoted," 
"appropriated."     On  the  scheme  which  I  propose,  the  phrase  is  easily 
explained ;  the  proprietor  was,  for  the  time  being,  not  to  regard  his  es- 
tate as  sequestered,  appropriated,  sacred,  to  himself. —  How  natural,  also, 
to  hold  out  as  a  motive  to  liberality  to  servants,  among  others,  on  one 
year  (xxv.  6),  the  greater  productiveness  of  the  land  during  the  other  six 
(xxv.  19,  21).    Grateful  for  the  indulgence  they  had  experienced,  laborers 
would  toil  to  enrich  their  master  with  a  cheerful  and  effective  service. 

VOL.  I.  39 


306  LEVITICUS   XVI.  1— XXVII.  34i  {LECT. 

run  beyond  fifty  years,  and  would  be  in  force  for  as  many 
years  less 'than  that  term,  as  had  passed  from  the  last 
Jubilee  to  the  time  of  the  alienation.  Thus,  on  the  one 
hand,  -every  one  had  a  provision,  and  a  stake  in  the 
commonwealtji,  such  as  even  the  vice  and  improvidence 
of  parents  could  not  deprive  him  of  ;  and,  on  the 
other,  property  was  prevented-  'from  accumulating  in 
masses,  dangerous  to  liberty.  The  successful  adven- 
turer, who  had  gone '  on  adding  ho"use  to  house,  and 
field  to  field,  gained  no  permanent  advantage  over  his 
fellows.  The  fiftieth  year  was  always  approaching,  with 
silent  but  sure  speed,  tof  relax;  his  capacious  hold.  And 
the  Israelite,  whom  accident  had  carried  abroad,  never 
needed  to  remain  a  >vanderer,  for  want  of  ^  home  of  his 
own  to  welco*me  hini.  A  home  there  always 'was,  would 
he  but  choose  the'  proper  time"  to  reclaim  it.* 

The  sense  of  the  twenty-sixth  chapter,  I  take  to  be 
a  distinct  confirmation  of  the  view  which  I  have  formerly 
presented ;  viz.  that  the  Law  was*  in  part  intended  and 


•  Lev.  XXV.  8-17,  23,  24,  .39-46,  54,  55.  — As  the  Jubilee  year  was 
to  begin  on  the  Day  of  Atonement,  (9,)  it  is  likely  that  the  Sabbatical 
years,  the  computation  of  which  had  reference  to  ihe  computation  of 
the  Jubilee,  (8,)  began  at  the  same  time.  In  respect  to  agricultural  la- 
bors, the  rule  was  the  same  for  both  celebrations  (II,  12). —  From  verses 
24,  26,  it  would  appear  that  the  proprietor  might  at  any  time  pay  off  his 
mortgage,  (as  we  should  phrase  it,)  and  recover  his  estate,  before  the  Ju- 
bilee came  round.  —  The  peculiarity  of  the  regulation  in  verses  29-31, 
permitting  houses  in  walled  cities  to  be  sold  in  perpetuity,  I  suppose 
had  reference  to  the  case  of  foreigners  proposing  to  settle  in  Judea.*  It 
was  the  policy  of  the  Law  to  invite  in  foreign  artisans,  agriculture  being 
the  proper  employment  of  native  Jews  ;  and  the  proper  place  for  the  habi- 
tations of  artisans  was  the  cities.  On  the  other  hand,  the  city  dwellings 
of  the  Levites  came  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  general  law,  (32-  34,  in 
which  last  verse  the  "  but "  of  our  version  should  rather  be  and,)  because 
the  Levites  were  to  have  no  real  estate  except  in  cities  and  their  suburbs, 
and  it  was  not  designed  that  they  should  ever  be  dispossessed. —  The 
provision  in  verses  35-38,  may  better  be  considered  in  another  place. 
See  remarks  on  Deut.  xxiii.  19,  20.  And  the  same  is  true  of  the  rules  in 
verses  25  -28,  47-53.    See  remarks  on  Numb.  xxxv.  9  et  seq. 


-XlII]  LEVITICUS  XVI.  1.  —  XXVU.  34.  307 

framed  to  qualify  the  Jewish  nation  to  perform  its  reU- 
gious  office,  by  means  of  securing  its  temporal  prosperity, 
and  its  social  union^  and  strength.*  If  it  obeyed  the 
Law,  so  wisely  devised  for  its  good,  it  would  attain' to 
wealth  and  power;  it'  would  be  prepared  to  defy  its 
enemies,  and  maintain  its  independence ;  the  land  would 
be  fruitful,  the  population  would  be  numerous  and  safe.f 
If  it  disregarded,  this 'divinely  prepared  instrun^ent  of  its 
growth  and  greatness,  national  poverty  and  imbecility, 
desolation,  disunion,  famine,  subjugation,  captivity, |  and 
all  the  miseries  which  were  wont  to  fall  on  conquered 
nations  in  those  barbarous  ages,  wbuld  be  its  bitter,  b.ut 
well-merited  lot.  l  find  i)o  intimation  throughout  the 
chapter,  of  a  miraculous  superintendence,  to  be  contin- 
ued after  the  national  independence  and  the  national 
institutions  had  been  miraculously  established.^  For 
aught  that  I  can  perceive,  the  nation  then  was  to  b© 
left  to  its  own  guidance,  and  its  own  responsibility.  It 
was  through  the  people's  experience  of  the  natural  con- 
sequences of  obedience  or  disobedience  to  a  law  'super- 
naturally  adapted  to  their  condition  and  wants,  that  God 
designed  to  reward  or  punish  its  observance  or  in- 
fraction. 

The  rules    relating  to  consecrations,  of  things  and 

•  See  above,  pp.  169, 170.  f  Lev.  xxvi.  7,  8 ;  4,  5, 10;  9 ;  6. 

t  xxvi.  19,  20,  16,  36  ;  22,  31  -  35  ;  37  »  26,  29 ;  17,  25 ;  33. 

§  If  verse  4  be  thought  an  exception  to  this  remark,  I  submit  that  its 
nteaning  would  be  well  expressed  thus;  "Then,  when  I  have  given  you 
rain  in  due  season,  the  land,"  &c.  Such  is  a  not  unusual  Scripture  phra- 
seology. Compare  Matt  xL  25,  where,  though  our  version  is  literally  cor- 
rect, no  one  doubts  that  the  meaning  is,  "  I  thank  thee,  because  when 
thou  hast  hid,"  &c,  —  The  language  in  verses  16,  26,  is  as  plainly  figura- 
tive as  that  in  8,  19.  —  The  sense  of  verses  40  -  44  is,  that  wherever  the 
lately  offending  but  now  contrite  Israelite  should  be,  God  would  loojc  on 
him  with  favor.  In  this,  there  is  nothing  indicated  of  a  permanent  miracu- 
lous administration.  But  I  should  prefer  to  begin  a  verse  with  the  last 
clause  of  verse  42,  which  I  think  is  connected  in  sense  with  the  following  ; 
"I  will  remember  the  land,  and  the  land  shall  be  left,"  &c. 


308  LEVITICUS  XVI.  i:-VXXVlI.  34.  [LECT. 

persons,  and  the  conditions,  on  which;  in  certain  cases, 
vows  of  consecration  might  be  remitted,  are  introduced, 
at  the  beginning'  of  the  twenty-^venth  chapter,  in  a 
way,  which  shp<vs  that  it  was  not  ihe  purpose  of  the 
Law  to  enforce  th^  practice,  but  merely  to  place  a 
natural  impulse  qf  devotion  under  useful  regulations.* 
If  an  Israelite,  under  such  an  impulse,  should  bind  hunself 
or  his  child  by  a  vow,  to  be  a  serv^ant  of  the  sanctuary, 
he  might  commute  that  service  by  paying  a  specified 
pecuniary  equivalent,  varying  with  sex  and  age,  into  the 
sacred  treasury ;  and,  if  he  were  too  poor  to  pay  tl;ie 
prescribed  sum,  it  was  in  the  discretion  of  the  priest  to 
fix  on  some  other,  proportioned  to  his  means.f  If  the 
\ow  related  to  -th*  gift  of  an  animal,  it  must,  by  all 
means,  be  offered'  in  sacrifice,  if  suitable  to  be  so  offer- 
ed; and- whoever  was  detected  in  attempting  to  sub- 
stitute for  it  one  of  inferior  worth,  was  pimished  by. the 
forfeiture  of  both.  If  it  were  an  unclean  animal  that 
had  been  consecrated,  the  owner  might  still  retain  it, 
11",  on  reflection,  such  was  his  wish,  on  the  payment  of 
one  fifth  more  than-  the  priest  declared  to  be  its  value. f 
On  the  same  condition,  a  house  or  a  farm,  consecrated 
as  a  religious  offering,  niight  be  redeemed.  The  esti- 
mation of  the  value  of  an  estate  so  consecrated  was  to 
have  reference  to  the  length  of  the  interval  between  the 
time  of  the  consecratioa  and  a  Jubilee  year,  at  which 
time  it  reverted  to  its  owner ;  and  this  provision  held 

, . . s_ 

*  "  When  a  man  shall  make  a  singular  vow,".  (2,)  i.  e.  shalf  wish  to 
signalize  himself  by  a  voluntary  act  of  piety.  —  On  the  expression  "  thy 
estimation,"  in  the  same  verse,  the  commentators  have  disputed,  whose 
estimation  was  intended  ;  whether  the  estimation  of  the  priest,  the  ruler, 
or  the  worshipper,  to  be  made  from  time  to  time.  Clearly,- 1  think,  it  was 
neither.  A  permanent  estimation  was  determined  by  law  (3  -  7).  It  is 
the  people  that  is  addressed  (2),  and  "^thy  estimation"  means  the  estima- 
tion for  thee,  for  thy  government  —  W6  have  seen  forms  of  will-worship 
referried  to  in  Lev.  vii.  16 ;  xxii.  23 ;  xxiii.  38. 
t  xxvii.  2-8.  X  "vii.  9-  la 


XIII.]  LEVITICUS   XVI.  1.  — XXVII.   34.  309 

equally  good,  if  the  estate  consecrated  was  one  of  which 
the  devotee  was  only  a  tenant.*  Firstlings  of  whatever 
description  w^ere  no  subjects  for  voluntary  vows,  inas- 
much as  they  w  ere  already  consecrated  by  a  "standing 
law ;  but,  if  the  firstling  was  of  an  unclean  animal,  it 
might  be  redeemed  at  the  same  rate  of  commutation  aS 
was  prescribed  in  the  cases  just  now  named.f  Tliere 
was  one  form  of  consecnation,  called  by  a  peculiar 
name,  sometimes  rendered  in  our  version,  "devoting," 
and  sometimes  "  cursing,'-'  which  was  of  such  solemnity, 
that  to  prevent  its  frequent  ijsej  it  was  declared  to  ad- 
mit of  no  remission.!  .    .  ' 

The  twentieth  and  twenty-first  verses  of  this  chapter 
are  obscure,  and  I  have  seen  no  good  account  of  them. 
It  has  been  proposed  to  understand,  that,  though  other 
estates  reverted  unconditTonally  to  their  owners  at  the 
Jubilee,  those  consecrated  could  only  be  recovered  at 
any  time  by  the  payment  of  a  ransom.  But  this,  I 
think,  is  certainly  inconsistent  with  other  provisions.^ 
I  suggest,  that  we  have,  here  a  supplement  to  the  laws 
respecting  the  Jubilee,  (designed  to  prevent  its  fraudu- 

*  Lev.  xxviL  14  - 19,  22  -  25. 

f  xxvii.  26,  27.  Compare  Ex.  xiii.  11-13;  xxxir.  19,  20.  The  present 
rule  of  redemption  is  a  modiiicatioa  of  that  previously  promulgated, 
which  compelled  the  owner  to  lose  a  firstling  unclean  animal,  unless  he 
redeemed  it  in  kind  with  a  clean  one. 

J  Lev.  xxvii.  28,  29.  In  these  verses,  we  find  the  case  supposed  of  a 
man  heing  made  a  D^n,  and  so  doomed  to  death.  It  has  been  strangely 
imagined  that  this  might  be  done  by  private  will.  The  simple  account 
of  the  fact  I  take  to  be,  that  the  connexion,  treating  as  it  does  of  a  form 
of  devoting  which  admitted  no  restoration,  suggested  the  analogy  of  a 
man  devoted  to  death  by  public  authority,  whose  punishment  might  not 
be  remitted.  Concerning  such  criminals,  the  word  w^n  is  actually  used. 
Compare  Deut  xiii.  15, 17;  Josh.  vi.  17.  The  coimexion  is  natural.  Some 
things  consecrated  may  be  redeemed.  Lev.  xxvii.  13,  &c.  Others  are 
Onn,  and  may  not  be,  xxvii.  21,  28.  Some  criminals  too  may  ransom  their 
lives.  E.  g.  Ex.  xxi.  30.  Others,  more  guilty,  so  as  to  be  D'ln,  may  not. 
E.  g.  Numbers  xxxv.  31. 

§  See  Lev.  xxvii.  16  - 19. 


^' 


310/  LEVITICUS  XVI.  l.^XXVIL  34.  [LECT. 

lent  evasiop,)  to  the  following  effect;  If  a  man  not  only 
will  Qot  redeem  his  estate  himself,  but  has  conveyed  it 
to  another  person,  to  the  intent  'of  alienating-  it  perma- 
nently, he  shall  not  be  allowed  to  compass  that  unlaw- 
ful design,  but  at  the  Jubilee  it  ^hall  be  forfeited  to  the 
sacred  treasury.  -^  The  priests,  it  is  true,  could  not  hold 
it,  •  but  they  would  sell  it  to  some>  other  proprietor, 
selecting  no  doubt  some  one  of  the  same  tribe,  and 
having  reference  to. the  rights  of  the  nearest  kinsman.* 

The  msdtution  of  Tithes,  which  relates  to  one  of  the 
subjects  of  the  n^xt  Lecture,  is"  naturally  introduced  in 
this  place,  because,  except  in  the  case  of  sacrificial  ani- 
mals, it  was  to  admit '  of  commutations  similar  to  those 
upon  which  we  have  been  remarking. 

■  •  See  Lev.  xxv.  25  et  ffejq.  — Another  wa^  of  understanding  this  diffi- 
cult passage,  woifld  be  to  view  it  as  declaring  the  forfeiture,  at  the  Jubilee, 
of  landed  property,  which  an  Israelite  had  so  far  disregarded  the  spirit  of 
the  national  institutions,  as  even  to  lease> to  a  foreigner,  "another  man." 
Compare  xxv.  30. — From  a  comparison  of  xxvi.  46,  with  xxvii.  34,  it 
seems  natural  to  infer  that  Moses,  wl^en  he  wrote  the  former  text,  sup- 
posed that  this  series,  of  revelations  was  there  to  close. 


XIV.]  NUMBERS  I.  1.  — X.  10.  311 


f* 


LECTURE    XIV. 

NUMBERS    I.    1.  — X.   10. 

Census  of  the  People.  —  Explanation  of  its  Correspondence 
WITH  the  Enumeration  in  Exodus.  —  Arrangement  of  the 
Tribes  in  the  CaMp. — Census  of  the  Tribe  of  Levi. —  Ar- 
rangement of  its  Duties  at  the  Ta^erna^le., —  Its  Position 
IN  the  Camp.  —  CoNTRiBUTibS  of  the  Supernumerary  First- 
BoRN.  —  Duties  of  the  Levites  in  Later  Times.  —  Their 
Revenues.  —  Propriety  of  tHE  Selection  of  the  least  Nu- 
merous Tribe  FOR  Sacred  Offices. -:- Extension  and  Modifi- 
cation of  soms  Previous  Laws.  —  Ordeal  of  the  "Law  qf 
Jealousies." — Rules  respecting  the  Vow  of  Nazariteship. 
—  Benediction  prescribed  for  the  High  Priest's  Use. -tDo- 
jfATiONS  of  the  Princes  of  the  Tribes. —  A r{Iangement  of 
the  Light  in  the  Holt  Place.  —  Consecration  of  the  Le- 
vites, AND  New  Rule  •  for  their  Time  of  Service.  —  New 
Direction  relating  to  the  Passover.  -^  Provision  of  the 
Silver  Trumpets. 

The  national  worship  having  been  instituted,  and  a 
full  code  of  ritual  and  civil  laws  promulgated,  the  next 
step  Was  to  take  a  census  of  the  people ;  which  was 
done  according  to  tribes,  and  by  means  of  the  smaller 
family  divisions  of  the  tribes  respectively.* 

This  census  was  made,  or  at  least  was  begun,  under 
the  superintendence  of  one  chief  man  from  each  tribe, 
on  the  first  day  of  the  second  month  of  the  year,  the 
month  Jiar.  It  included  all  males,  except  of  the  tribe 
of  Levi,  "from  twenty  years  old  and  upward,  all  that 
were  able  to  go  forth  to  war  in  Israel."  f  To  keep 
good  the  number  of  twelve,  along  with  the  omission  of 
the  tribe  of  Levi,  the  descendants  of  Ephraim  and  Ma- 

•Numb.  i.  2,  4.  fi.  45,47-51. 


312  .  NUMBERS  I.  1.  — X.'IO.  [LECT. 

nasseh,  the  two  sons  of  Joseph,  we're  reckoned  as  two 
tribes.*  The  tribe  of  Judah  proved  the  largest,  num- 
bering seventy-four  thousa/id  and  six  hundred  warriors ; 
that  of  Manasseh,  the  least,  niimbering  thirty-two  thou^ 
sand  and  two  huBdred.f-  Ephraim  and  Manasseh  to- 
gether, composing  the  posterity  of  Joseph,  were,  within 
two  thousand,  as  numerous  as  the  posterity  of  Judah ; 
these  two  rival  families  considerably  exceeding  any  other 
in  numerical  force.  * 

The  whole  number  of  men  of  full  age  proved  to  be 
six  hundred  and.  three  thousand,  five  "huadred  and  "fifty ; 
the  same  number  with  that  which  is  declared,  sev- 
eral months  before,!  to  ha^e  paid  the  half-shekel  to 
Eleazar  and  Ithamar  towards  the  building  of  the  Tab- 
ernacle. The  question  has  accordingly  been  raised, 
whether  the  same  census  was  not  intended  in  both 
places ;  the  mention  cff  it-  being  either  anticipated  in  the 
passage  in  Exodus,  or  retrospectively  alluded  to  in  the 
passage  before  us.  The  careful  indication,  however,  of 
time  in  both  cases,  would  seeni  to  preclude  either  sup- 
position. And  when  another  fact  is  brought  into  view, 
the  difficulty  arising  out  of  the  exact  -coincidence  of 
numbers  may  appear  to  be  done  awJiy.  All  the 
enumerations  of  all  the  tribes  in  the  first  chapter  of 
Numbers,  present  even  tens.  The  unavoidable  con- 
clusion is,  that  a  perfectly  exact  enumeration  was  not 
intended.  It  contemplated  a  military  organization  of 
the  people,  which,  in  different  parts  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, we  learn  was  made  with  reference  to  decimal 
numbers.^  Units  not  being  counted,  the  similarity  be- 
tween enumerations,  made  at  periods  of  time  so  near  to 
one  another,  is  no  longer  matter  of  surprise ;  particularly 
if  we  suppose,  what  is  in  the  highest  degree  probable, 

•  Numb.  i.  32- 35.  j  i.  27,  35.  J  Ex.  xxxviii.  26. 

§  See  Deut  i.  15.    Compare  Ex.  xviiL  25. 


XIV.]  NUMBERS  I.   1.  — X.  10.  313 

that  the  second  was  not  so  much  a  distinct  counting,  as 
a  more  formal  verification  of  the  first.  When  Eleazar 
and  Ithamar  had  already  so  recently  made  out  their 
enumeration  of  the  people  for  one  purpose,  it  is  alto^ 
gether  unlikely  that  their  lists  would  be  disregarded, 
and  a  work  so  onerous  be  gone  through,  a  second  lime^ 
de  integro.  It  is  safely  to  be  presumed,  that  the  list 
first  made  would  be  put  into  the  hands  of  the  oflficers 
who  were  to  superintend  the  new  enrolment ;  and  that, 
as  the  number,  supposing  it  to  have  been  accurately 
stated  in  the  first  instance,  could  not  have  become  ma- 
terially different  in  so  short  a  space  of  time,  the  main 
purpose  would  be  to  authenticate  it,  without  disturb- 
ing it  any  further  than  to  count,  instead  of  each  ihdr- 
vidual  of  any  company  who  had  died  in  the  interval, 
the  name  of  some  one  who  had  grown  up  to  full  age.* 
For  the  object  had  in  view,  such  a  course  of  pro- 
ceeding would  have  been  sufficiently  precise.  To  aim 
at  a  greater  exactness,  would  have  been  no  better  than 
a  fastidious  nicety.f  '  And  the  particular  and  repeated 
mention  of  the  agency  of  the  prince  of  each  tribe  in  the 
taking  of  this  latter  census,  may  be  thought  to  show, 
that  its  object  was  to  satisfy  each  prince,  that  his  tribe 
was  subject  to  do  military  duty  to  the  extent  indicated 
by  the  census  of  Eleazar  and  Itharaar.J 

*  Compare  Numb.  i.  18. 

f  I  might  urge  further  this  view  of  a  census  only  in  round  numbers 
having  been  intended.  In  all  the  tribes  but  one,  (25,)  the  sum  is  given 
in  even  hundreds  ;  and  in  that,  there  is  an  even  half-hundred.  It  is  likely 
that  in  different  tribes  the  reckoning  was  made  with  different  degrees  of 
precision. 

X  i.  4-16,44.  —  I  cannot  forbear  another  suggestion  on  the  perfect 
suitableness  of  the  arrangement  of  this  double  census.  The  religious 
revenues  were  to  consist,  in  great  part,  in  tithes.  It  was  fit,  then,  that 
the  priests  should  know  what  amount  of  tithes  was  to  be  expected.  Ac- 
cordingly, advantage  is  taken  of  a  particular  measure,  to  make  an  enrol- 
ment under  their  direction.     On  the  other  hand,  to  satisfy  the  party  which 

VOL.  I.  40 


314  NUMB^ERS   I.   1.  — X.   10.  [LECT. 

.The  organization  having  been  in  this  respect  com- 
pleted, the  position  of  the  several-  tribes  in  the  camp  is 
next  determined.  On  each  side  of  the  Tabernacle,  east, 
south,  west,  and  north,  three  tribes  are  to  pitch  theu* 
tents  "  afar  off,"  ^ach  tribe  under  its  own  general,  and 
each  division  of  three  tribes,  with  one  exception,*  to 
be  under  the  command  of  the  general  of  the  most 
numerous  of  the  three.  In  the  arrangement  of  these 
divisions,'  we  see  a  regard  paid  to  family  affinities,  atid 
(if  I  may  use  the  expression,  in  the  qualified  sense 
which  will  suggest^  itself,)  to  considerations  of  policy. 
The  tribes  of  Jud^h  -and- Joseph  are  encamped  in  the 
front  and  rear  of  the  Tabernacle,  so  as  to  occupy  the  posts 
of  hbnor  and  danger,  and  at  the. same  time,' by  being  as  far 
as  possible  from  each  other,  to  avoid  interferences  which 
might  lead  to  collision.  The  tribe  of  Judah  leads  the 
host;  a  distinction  due  to  its  superior  numbers,  and  at 
the  same 'time,  perhaps,  designed  to  counterbalance  the 
advantage  of  the  family  of  Joseph,  in  having  the  military 
leader  of  the  whole  people,  Joshua,  from  its  own  num- 
ber. The  secondary  tribes  of  the  camp  of  Judah  were 
those  of  Issachar  and  Zebulun,  whose  ancestors  were 
both,  like  Judah,  children  of  Leah,  Jacob's  first  wife. 
The  arrangement  of  the   western   camp  presents  an 

was  to  be  taxed,  that  there  had  been  no  over-statement,  which  might 
be  the  ground  of  extortion,  advantage  is  soon  taken  of  another  occasion 
to  verify  the  list,  under  the  auspices  of  other  persons,  whose  interest  was 
that  of  the  tax-payers.  And  while  each  is  thus  made  a  check  on  the 
other,  this  is  not  ostensibly  the  case,  so  as  to  excite  any  jealousy  or  pride ; 
but  each  seems  to  be  doing  his  own  proper  business,  the  priests  collecting 
a  religious  tax,  the  princes  arranging  a  military  levy. —  Once  more;  the 
weaker  party,  the  priests,  make  out  the  first  list  Had  the  order  been 
diflFerent,  the  stronger  party  would  have  been  less  manageable,  had  there 
been  found  any  error  to  correct.  —  Here  is  one  instance,  I  think,  of  that 
consummate  wisdom  of  Moses'  administration,  which  is  constantly  re- 
vealing itself  to  a  careful  attention. 
•  Numb.  ii.  10,  11 ;  compare  12, 13. 


XIV.]  .NUMBERS  I.   l.  —  X.   10.,  315 

equally  close  family  alliance.  It  consists  of  the  posterity 
of  Ephraim  and  Manasseh,  the  two  sons  of  Joseph,  and 
of  Benjamin,  the  only  other  son  of  Rachel ;  the  tribe 
of  Ephraim,  the  most  numerous,  having  here  the  prece- 
dence. The  tribes  of  Reuben  and  Simeon,  descendants 
of  Leah,  it  might  be  natural  to  expect  to  find  associ- 
ated with  Judah.  But  it  is  likely  that,  being  both  de- 
scended from  an  older  son  of  Jacob;  they  would  ill 
have  brooked  that  direct  control  on  the  part  of  the 
posterity  of  Judah,  which  the  latter,  on  the  other  hland, 
on  afccount  of  their  greater  numbers  and  power,  (as  well 
as  their  claim^to  the  birth-right,*  which  we  are  to  con- 
sider hereafter,)  would-  have- been  still  more  discon- 
tented to  relinquish.  Accordingly,  the  wounded  pride 
of  the  Reubenites  is  soothed,  by  being  placed  at  the 
head  of  a  camp .  of  their  own ;  a  distinction,  which 
(though  it  is  the  only  departure  from  the  rule  of  the 
most  numerous  tribe -in  a  division  being  its  leader,)  the 
Simeonites,  whose  census  was  greater,  would  be  willing 
to  concede  to  them,  in  consistency  with  the  principle 
which  made  the  ground  of  the  jealousy,  entertained  by 
both  tribes,  of  that  of  Judah,  viz.  the  priority  of  their 
ancestor's  birth.  Four  tribes  remained  to  be  arranged ; 
Dan  and  Naphtali,  descended  from  Rachel's  slave, 
Bilhah,  and  thus,  in  some  sense,  according  to  the  concep- 
tions of  the  time,  of  Rachel's  family ;  and  Gad  and  Ash- 
er,  descended  from  Zilpah,  the  slave  of  Leah.  Of  these, 
Dan  w-as  much  the  most  numerous ;  and  besides,  as 
descendants  of  Leah  commanded  in  two  divisions,  it 
may  be  supposed  that  there  was  a  propriety  in  giving 
to  the  family  of  Rachel  a  predominance  in  the  two 
others.  Dan  is  accordingly  made  the  leader  of  the 
northern  division,  and  Naphtali,  of  the  same  parentage, 
assigned  to  the  same  quarter.     There  remain  Gad  and 

*  Gen.  xlix.  8. 


316  NUMBERS  I.  l.  —  X.  10.  [LECT. 

Asher,  both  descended  from  Zilpah,  to  fill  the  two  yet 
vacant  places  in  the  southern  and  northern  divisions  oi 
Leah  and  Rachel.  To  the, former  of  these,  the  more 
numerous  of  the  two,  is  allotted  the  place,  with  Reuben 
and  Simeon,  to  which  domestic  affinities  assign  it ;  while 
Asher  is  placed,  not  'after,  as  we  might  have  expected, 
but  between  Dan  and  Naphtali ;  an  arrangement,  which, 
perhaps,  it  is  not  going  too  far  to  suggest,  may  have 
been  intended  to  overawe  any  discontent  w^hich  may 
haVe  been  felt  at  its  isolated  position. 

Tfie  tribe  of  Levi,  excepted  from  the  general  reckon- 
ing, is  npw  enumerated.*  The  nature  of  the  claim 
upon  the  first-born  of  all  the  families  of  Israel,  to  be 
consecrated  to  tlie  service  of  Jehovah,  (in  consequence 
of  their  exemption  when  the  first-born  of  Egypt  were 
slain,)  received  our  attention  in  a  former  connexion. f  By 
an  arrangement,  obviously  tending  to  a  better  organiza- 
tion of  the  sacerdotal  order,  as  well  as  advantageous 
alike  to  both  parties,  —  to  those  who  were  adopted,  and 
those  who  were  dispensed,  —  the  tribe  of  Levi  are  now 
consecrated  to  that  service,  in  the  place  of  the  first-born 
of  all  the  tribes.t  This  tribe  consisted  of  three  families, 
descended  from  Levi's  three  sons,  Gershon,  Kohath, 
and  Merari.     Its  census  exhibited  only  twenty  thousand 

•  "  These  also  are  the  generations  of  Aaron  and  Moses"  Numb.  iii.  1. 
Only  the  names  of  Aaron's  children  follow,  in  the  immediate  context. 
To  explain  this,  it  has  been  suggested,  that,  as  Moses'  sons  ^vere  children 
of  a  foreign  mother,  they  could  not  be  reckoned  among  Levites ;  and 
accordingly  his  nearest  kinsmen  after  these,  his  nephews,  are  reckoned  as 
his  family.  But  this  is  asserted  without  authority,  and  the  contrary  is  de- 
clared, 1  Chron.  xxiii.  14.  I  find  no  difficulty  in  the  text.  Verse  1  is 
the  title  of  the  whole  chapter.  Moses'  children  are  included  in  the  de- 
scription in  verse  19.  And  they  are  mentioned  expressly  in  verse  1,  in 
order  to  call  the  reader's  attention  more  distinctly  to  the  fact,  that  to 
Aaron's  children  the  priesthood  was  assigned,  while  those  of  Moses, 
though  he  was  leader  of  the  people,  only  took  the  rank  of  common  Levites. 

t  pp.  144,  145.  X  Numb.  iii.  11 -la 


XIV.]  NUMBERS  I.   1.  — X.  10.  317 

three  hundred  males  over  a  month  old,*  the  family  of 

Kohath  being  most  numerous,  and  that  of  Merari  least.t 

These  families   were  henceforward   devoted  to  the 

service  of  the  Tabernacle,  in  respedt  to  which,  each, 

•  This  is  the  sum  of  the  enumerations  of  the- three  families  in  verses 
22,  28,  and  34.  But  verse  39  states  the  sunj  at  twenty-two  thousand,  and 
this  latter  census  is  adhered  to  in  the  context,  under  circumstances  de- 
manding accuracy.  (Compare  46  with  43.)  In.  the  early  writing  of  the 
Hebrews,  it  is  probable  (see  p.  56)  that  the  alphabetical  signs  were  used 
in  numerical  notation,  as  they  are  still,  where  brevity  is  studieii ;  and 
accordingly,  with  characters  so  nearly  resembling  each  other  as  do  many 
of  the  Hebrew,  it  is  impossible  to  rely,  in  such  cases,  on  the  integrity  of 
the  text  Kennicott  accordingly  conjectures,  that  in  verse  22,  instead  of 
•^,  denoting  200,  some  copyist  wrote  "],  used  for  500,  which  would  recon- 
cile the  numbers.  ^  Houbigant  and  Michaelis,  without  resorting  to  the 
hypothesis  of  alphabetical  notation,  account  for  the  discrepance  by^  the 
accidental  omission  of  a  letter  in  verse  28,  by  which  means  vh]0  three, 
became  \i;w  six.  —  After  all,  it  seems  likely,  that,  agreeably  to  the  princi- 
ple of  the  arrangement,  the  first-born  of  the  Levitical,  family  were  to  bye 
deducted  from  tlie  gross  census  of  the  tribe ;  and  their  number,  if,  in  the 
same  proportion  as  the  first-born  of  the  other  tribes,  would  not  have  been 
so  much  over  three  hundred  as  to  make  it  unsuitable  to  estimate  thfe 
residue  at  twenty-two  even  thousands. 

Another  difficulty  arises  out  of  the  small  number  of  Jirst-bom,  above  a 
month  old,  among  the  whole  people.  It  is  stated  (43),  at  22,273.  Re- 
specting this,  it  has  been  remarked,  that,  1.  where  the  firstf  child  was 
female,  no  first-born  was  reckoned  in  a  family ;  2i  first-born  sons,  who 
were  themselves  heads  of  families,  did  not  come  into  the  census.  But  I 
do  not  find  authority  for  the  first  assertion,  and  the  second  I  could  not 
adopt  without  qualification.  The  truth  I  take  to  have  been,  that,'  in  the 
patriarchal  way  of  living  of  the  Jews,  two,  three,  and  four  generations 
composed  one  family ;  and  that  in  each  domestic  establishment,  however 
large,  there  was  reckoned  only  one  Jirst-bom,  who  was  the  head  of  the 
family  after  the  common  ancestor,  and  the  delegate  of  his  authority. 

f  From  the  fact  that  the  census  in  Numbers,  from  which  the  Levites 
were  excluded,  (Numb.  i.  47-49.)  resulted  in  the  same  number  with  that 
in  Exodus,  (compare  Numb.  i.  46 ;  Ex.  xxxviii.  26,)  it  follows,  that  in  the 
first  census  also  no  account  was  made  of  the  Levitical  tribe  ;  from  which 
we  further  infer,  that,  as  early  as  the  time  of  the  first  census,  the  designa- 
tion of  the  Levites  to  their  sacred  trust,  referred  to  retrospectively  in  Numb. 
L  47  -  51,  had  been  made  known,  at  ieast  in  some  general  way.  In  Lev. 
XXV.  32-34,  we  also  find  this  designation  alluded  to,  as  an  arrttngement 
understood.  It  is  natural  to  regard  it,  either  as  a  consequence  of  the 
act  of  the  Levites,  recorded  in  Ex.  xxxii.  26  -  28,  or  as  having  been  even 
of  an  earlier  date,  and  as  having  prompted  their  zeal  on  that  occasion. 
Compare  also  Ex.  xxxviii.  21,  and  Deut.  x.  8,  9. 


318  NUMBERS  1.  ].— X.    10.  [  LECT. 

under  the  direction  of  its  own  chief,*  had  its  separate 
charge,  to  be  executed  by  its  males  "from  tliirty  years 
old  and  upward,  even  unto  fifty  years  old."t  The 
Kohathite  servants  of  the  Tabernacle,  two  thousand  seven 
hundred  arid  fifty  in  number,  were,  under  the  oversight 
of  Eleazar,  the  eldest  son  of  Aaron,  to  have  the  charge 
of  the  furniture  of  the  sacred  edifice,  when  on  the 
march,  removing  "and  replacing  it  when  the  camp  was 
broken  up  and  "formed.  The  two  thousand  six  hundred 
and  thirty  Gershonites  were  to  take  care  of  the  cover- 
ings and  hangings  of  the  Tabernacle  and  its  court ;  while 
to  the  three  thousand  two  hundred  Merarites,  were 
coriimitted  the  more  solid' parts  of  the  edifice.  The 
two  last  parties  were  to  be  under  the  direction  of  Itha- 
mair,  Avon's  younger  son,t  while  the  whole  were  to  be 
under  the  supervision  of  Eleazar,^  to  whom  also  a  per- 
sonal trust,  of  special  responsibility,  was  committed. 
The  Kohathites  were  charged,  on  pain  of  death,  not  to 
touch,  or  so  much  as  look  at,  the  sacred  utensils,  till 
they  had  been  packed  by  the  priests,  and  prepared  for 
removal.  II  In  the  camp  the  Kohathites  were  to  pitch  on 
the  south  side  of  the  Tabernacle,  the  Gershonites  on  the 
west,  and  the  Merarites  on  the  north ;  while  the  tents 
of  Moses  and  the  priests  were  to  be  "  before  the  taber- 
nacle, towards  the  east."  H  The  encampments  of  the 
Levites  were  of  course  near  to  the  Tabernacle,  which 
was  their  charge,  and  within  the  area  formed  by  the 
encampments  of  the  other  tribes.  But  it  is  equally  evi- 
dent that  they  must  have  been,  principally,  at  least,  on 
the  outside  of  the  Tabernacle  Court.  The  tents  of 
Moses  and  the  priests,  it  is  to  be  presumed,  were  with- 
in the  enclosure ;  and  the  same  thing  is  probable  of  a 
small  portion  of  each  of  the  Levitical  families  detached 

•  Numb.  iii.  24,  30,  35.  f  iv.  35.  J  iv.  28,  a*?. 

§  iii.  32;  iv.  16.  ||  iv.  15,  20.  IT  iii.  23,  20,  35, 38. 


•ir 


XIV.  J  NUMBERS   I.   1.  — X.    10.  319 

to  serve  as  a  guard  within  the  sacred  precincts.  But 
an  area  of  only  a  hundred  cubits  by  fifty,  partly  occupied 
too  by  the  Tabernacle,  the  altar,  and  the  laver,  afforded 
no  sufficient  accommodation  for  the  whole. 

The  number  of  the  male  first-born  of  all  the  tribes 
being  ascertained  to  be  greater,  by  t\vo  hundred  and 
seventy-three,  than  that  of  the  males  of  the  Levitical 
family,  for  whom,  to  use  the  appropriate  language,  they 
had  beeu'  exchanged,  -each  individual  of  this  residual 
number  was  called  upon  to  pay  five  shekels,  under  the 
name  of  a  bounty  for  this  dispensation  from  the  sacer- 
dotal service.  The  chief  use  of  this  arrangement,  I 
conceive  to  have  been,  to  furnish  the  ptecedent  of  a 
permanent  tax^  intended  to  be  laid  on  the  first-born  in 
after  times,  as  one  of  the  perquisites  of  the  priesthood.* 
In  the  first  instance,  it  could  not  have  been  onerous, 
the  number  of  supernumeraries,  on  whom  it  was  as- 
sessed, being  so  small,  and  the  whole  amount  being 
probably  levied  on  all  the  first-born,  since  one  had  no 
better  right  than  another  to  consider  himself  redeemed 
by  the  substitution  of  a  Levite  in  his  place.  Once 
established,  the  tax  would  be  one  likely  to  be  cheerfully 
paid,  both  on  account  of  the  interesting  associations 
belonging  to  its  original  institution,  and  the  happy  cir- 
cumstances under  which  a  parent  would  be  called  on  to 
pay  it  for  his  heir.  On  the  one  hand,  it  would  furnish  a 
perpetual  revenue  to  the  priesthood,  considerable  in 
amount ;  while,  on  the  other,  it  would  come  from  those, 
whose  domestic  expenses  were  not  yet  such  as  to  ren- 
der it  burdensome. 

At  this  early  period,  then,  we  find  the  tribe  of  Levi 
formally  separated  for  the  service  of  the  national  re- 
ligion. At  present,  their  duties  were  very  simple,  as 
was  needful,  while  the  institution  of  their  peculiarity  was 

*  Numb.  iii.  51 ;  xviii.  14  -  16. 


320  NUMBERS  I.  1.  — X.  10.  [LECT. 

still  recent.  When  a  sense  of  responsibility  had  been 
first  impressed  by  the  position  which  they  were  called 
to  fill,  and  each  man  had  come  to  feel  something  of  the 
spirit  of  his  order,  they  still  needed  to  be  educated  for 
the  duties  which  it  was  designed  that  they  should  dis- 
charge. Along  with  the  priests,  their  leaders,  and  their 
fellows  of  the  same  tribe,  they  appear  to  have  been 
intended  to  constitute  a  balance  in  the  state,  of  the 
nature  of  a  learned  aristocracy ;  and,  in  this  view,  Micha- 
elis  has  compared  them  to  the  Mandarins  of  China.* 
It  would  be  ah  error  to  suppose,,  that  the  priests  and 
Levites  were  ministers  of  religion  in  any  sense  known 
to  Christianity.  Of  public  prayers  we  know  nothing 
in  the  early  ages,  unless  we  give  that  name  to  the  con- 
fession of  the  people's  sins  by  the  high-priest  over  the 
scape-goat's  head,  or  his  blessing  upon  the  people, 
recorded  a  few  chapters  further  on.  Nothing  so  near 
to  preaching,  as  public  expositions  of  the  Law,  ap- 
pears to  have  been  practised  earlier  than  the  time  of 
the  captivity ;  and  even  music,  whether  vocal  or  instru- 
mental, seems  to  have  owed  its  introduction  among  the 
services  of  worship,  to  the  magnificent  taste  of  David. 
The  Levites,  too,  congregated  in  their  colleges,  for  such 
in  effect  their  forty-eight  cities  were,  were  not  so  placed 
as  to  admit  of  any  such  relation  to  the  people,  as  is  sus- 
tained by  the  pastors  of  Christian  congregations. 

The  Levitical  institution  appears  to  have  resembled 
one,  with  which  the  Israelites  were  already  well  ac- 
quainted, from  their  residence  in  Egypt.  The  office  of 
the  inferior  classes  of  the  priesthood  in  that  country 
consisted,  not  only  in  rendering  services  in  the  solemni- 
zation of  the  national  worship,  but  in  the  culture  of 
numerous  branches  f  of  science  and  art.     They  formed, 

*  "  Commentaries  "  &c.,  book  2,  chap.  5,  §  6. 

f  Respecting  the   Egyptian  orders,  called  by  the  Greek  historians 


XIV.]  NUMBERS   I.   1.  — X.   10.  321 

in  short,  the  learned,  as  well  as  the  sacerdotal  body, 
devoting  themselves  to  the  study  of  astronomy,  natural 
history,  mathematics,  jurisprudence,  history,  and  medi- 
cine, and  being  looked  to  by  the  community  for  the 
performance  of  such  duties,  as  required  knowledge  and 
skill  in  these  departments.  In  Egypt,  too,  as  in  the 
Levitical  order,  the  otfice  in  question  was  hereditary ; 
a  method  resorted  to  in  many  countries,  especially  in 
antiquity,  in  order  to  secure  a  succession  of  function- 
aries adequately  accomphshed  for  the  public  service,  by 
education  in  the  science  or  art  to  be  exercised. 

To  the  Levites,  accordingly,  in  after  ages,  when  the 
system  became  more  developed,  we  find  that  various 
duties  were  actually  assigned,  requiring  the  wisdom  and 
accomphshments  which  only  culture  can  bestow.  Part, 
indeed,  performed  the  menial  offices  of  the  ritual,  but 
even  to  those  a  great  responsibility  belonged ;  another 
part  devoted  their  skill  in  the  art  of  music  to  the  in- 
creasing of  the  attractions  of  the  Temple  service ;  and 
others  held  the  important  trusts  of  collectors  and  guar- 
dians of  the  sacred  treasury,  scribes,  and  judges.*  They 
were  probably  the  transcribers,  from  which  it  would 
naturally  follow,  that  they  would  also  on  many  occa- 
sions be  expositors,  of  the  Law  of  Moses,  the  only 
written  Israelitish  code.  Then-  relation  to  the  Taber- 
nacle effectually  constituted  them  the  military  guard  of 
that  structure,  and  of  the  worship  there  conducted, 
assigning  to  them  a  service,  when  occasion  should  de- 
mand their  intervention,  similar  to  what  they  had  ac- 
tually performed  at  a  previous  time ;  t  and  there  is  a 
distinct  appearance  of  a  military  organization  of  theu^,t 

MmxifM  and  'it(*y(mft/imrut,  see  Jablonski's  "Pantheon  Egyptiacum,"  Proleg. 
cap.  3,  passim ;  prsesertim  §§  39-45. 

•  1  Chron.  xxiii.  4,  5 ;  xxvi.  26,  29 ;  2  Chron.  xix.  8 ;  xxxiv.  13. 

f  Ex.  xxxii.  26.  J  2  Kings  xi.  4  et  seq. 

VOL.   I.  41 


322  NUMBERS  I.  l.  —  X.  10.  [LECT. 

at  a  later  period.  Finally,  their  position  between  the 
priests  and  the  people  was  such  as  to  qualify  them  to 
exert  an  influence  upon  each,  salutary  to  both,  and 
conducive  to  the  common  good. 

These  facts  being  weighed,  the  rich  revenues  of  the 
tribe  will  no  longer  be  thought  matter  of  surprise. 
The  males  of  the  tribe  of  Levi  were  only  twenty-two 
thousand  in  number.  Supposing  twelve  thousand  of 
these  to  be  of  full  age,  that  body,  through  its  title  to 
one  tenth  part  of  the  income  of  six  hundred  thousand 
IsraeUtes,  received  five  times  as  much  as  the  same 
number  of  men  belonging  to  any  other  tribe  of  the 
nation.  In  consideration  of  this,  however,  they  relin- 
quished their  claim  to  a  share  in  the  common  terri- 
tory, which,  in  the  proportion  of  their  numbers,  would 
have  been  one  fiftieth  part,  leaving  in  reality  their  in- 
come at  only  four  times  the  amount  of  the  average 
income  of  other  men,  a  sum  certainly  far  from  ex- 
cessive, when  considered  in  relation  to  the  services 
which  it  bought,  if  the  practice  of  any  nation  may 
decide  the  question.  To  provide  for  the  exercise  of 
the  learned  professions,  for  so  many  functions  of  mag- 
istracy, and  so  many  subordinate  departments  of  the 
public  service,  at  an  expense  for  each  individual  not 
exceeding  four  or  five  times  the  average  of  the  income 
of  other  citizens,  would  undoubtedly  require  an  eco- 
nomical administration. 

In  this  connexion  we  cannot  but  be  struck  with  the 
relation  of  the  Levitical  tribe  to  the  rest,  in  point  of 
numbers.  A  tribe  very  much  less  numerous  than  either 
of  the  others  is  chosen  to  be  devoted  to  the  services 
of  religion.  Of  the  twenty-two  thousand  male  Levites 
over  a  month  old,  supposing  twelve  thousand  to  be  of 
mature  age,  which  is  thought  to  be  a  reasonable  calcu- 
lation, the  Levites  were  but  a  little  more  than  a  third 


XIV.]  NUMBERS  I.   1.  — X.  10.  323 

more  numerous  than  the  children  of  Manasseh,  who 
constituted  the  smallest  of  the  other  tribes.  I  think, 
that,  independently  of  other  reasons  for  the  selection 
of  this  tribe  for  the  sacerdotal  office,  we  may  see  that 
it  was  rendered  fit  by  the  circumstance  now  under  our 
notice.  The  sacred  authority  was  a  balance  in  the  com- 
monwealth, which  must  not  be  suffered  to  become  a  pre- 
ponderating weight.  It  furnished  great  advantages  for 
political  usurpation,  if  other  circumstances  should  favor. 
Accordingly,  it  was  mo^t  safely  committed  to  that  di- 
vision of  the  people,  which  was  much  the  least  formida- 
ble through  its  numerical  force.  Again ;  a  dispensation 
of  one  of  the  more  numerous  tribes  from  the  payment 
of  tithes,  and  from  ordinary  military  service,  would  have 
occasioned  too  large  a  deduction  from  the  religious 
revenues  and  the  military  force ;  and  still  more,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  division  of  the  national  tithes  among 
a  large  number  of  servants  of  the  sanctuary,  would 
have  lessened  the  dignity  of  the  station,  both  by  de- 
tracting from  the  distinction  implied  in  it,  and  by  afford- 
ing to  each  individual  a  less  generous  support.  And 
it  may  even  be  thought  probable,  that  an  additional 
reason  for  the  seclusion  of  the  Levites  in  separate 
cities,  while  the  other  tribes  had  the  free  range  and 
the  hardy  habits  of  an  agricultural  life,  was  not  only,  that, 
through  a  direct  and  intimate  mutual  influence,  they 
might  impel  each  other  forward  in  that  learned  civiliza- 
tion, of  which  compact  communities  are  the  natural 
seat,  but  also  that,  agreeably  to  well-ascertained  princi- 
ples of  political  economy,  their  increase  of  population 
might  be  less  rapid  than  that  of  the  other  tribes. 

The  direction  at  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  chapter,* 
that  persons  affected  with  certain  ritual  impurities  should 
be  put  without  the  camp,  had  been  already  given,t  in 

*  Numb.  V.  1  -4.  t  Lev.  xiiL  46. 


324  NUMBERS  I.   1.  — X.  10.  [LECT. 

respect  to  lepers.  It  is  now  repeated  concerning  them, 
in  order  to  be  extended  to  other  cases  of  uncleanness, 
which  had  before  been  treated,  but  subjected  to  a  less 
rigid  regulation.*  It  would  seem  that  the  previous  pro- 
visions concerning  these  latter  had  not  completely  ac- 
complished the  object.  The  people,  having  been  led 
by  a  little  experience  to  see  this,  and  having  been  already 
brought  into  a  degree  of  subordination  and  method  by 
the  operation  of  the  first  rule,  would  now  bear  a  stricter 
one  more  readily  than  if  the  latter  had  in  the  first 
instance  been  enforced. 

The  next  lawf  is  but  an  extension  of  that  recorded 
at  the  beginning  of  the  sixth  chapter  of  Leviticus.  It 
had  been  there  directed,  that,  besides  the  Trespass 
Offering  to  be  presented  in  certain  cases,  the  faulty 
person  should  make  restitution  to  whomsoever  he  had 
wronged,  with  an  addition  of  one  fifth  part  of  the  amount 
of  the  injury  done.J  But  if  the  other  party  were  dead 
meanwhile,  particularly  if  he  had  left  no  legal  represen- 
tative, a  case  would  arise  which  remained  to  be  pro- 
vided for.  It  probably  had  arisen  in  some  instance, 
creating  occasion  for  the  present  law,  which  is  simply, 
that,  under  such  circumstances,  the  wrong-doer  should 
not  be  dispensed  from  his  obligation,  but  should  pay  to 
the  priest  the  amount  of  restitution  which  he  owed. 
This  rule,  analogous  in  some  degree  to  those  modern 
usages,  by  which  the  state  claims  the  property  of  those 
who  leave  no  heirs,  was  useful  as  bringing  another  per- 
quisite to  the  priesthood,  and  still  more,  as  securing,  in 
all  cases  whatever,  the  exaction  of  a  rightful  penalty. 

The  direction  which  next  follows,  I  understand  to  be 
to  this  effect;  that  the  votary,  who  should  bring  the 
offering  just  mentioned,  might  make  his  own  choice 
among  the  priests,  to  which  of  them  he  would  present 

♦  Lev.  xi.  39, 40 ;  XV.  1  - 1 3.  f  Numb.  v.  5  -  8.  J  Lev.  ^-i.  6,  7. 


XIV.]  NUMBERS  I.   1.  — X.  10.  325 

it.*  The  effect  would  be  to  make  it  the  priests'  inter- 
est to  conciliate  individually  the  people's  favor,  and,  still 
more,  to  encourage  the  people  to  present  such  offerings, 
through  the  additional  motive  of  the  satisfaction  ex- 
perienced in  making  a  donation  to  a  friend.  That  they 
should  be  favorably  disposed  towards  such  offerings, 
was,  on  all  accounts,  desirable,  particularly  in  respect  to 
Sin  and  Trespass  Offerings,  as  these  would  often  imply 
the  acknowledgment  of  faults  which  could  only  be 
brought  to  light  through  the  transgressor's  own  con- 
fession. ,    • 

The  passage,  which  occupies  the  rest  of  this  chapter, 
relating  to  the  "law  of  jealousies,"  presents  one  of  the 
instances,  which  would  be  the  most  confidently  appeal- 
ed to,  in  support  of  the  theory  of  a  permanent  super- 
natural administration  of  the  Jewish  affairs.  It  would 
be  said,  that  we  there  read  the  permanent  menace  of 
the  punishment  of  a  certain  crime,  which  punishment 
could  only  be  made  to  fall  on  the  criminal  through  a 
miraculous  divine  interposition.  I  submit,  however, 
that  there  is  no  proof,  of  a  sort  to  justify  a  careful 
reasoner  in  the  adoption  of  an  inference  of  such  vast 
importance. 

It  is  altogether  probable,  that  it  is  no  new  process  of 
investigation,  which  is  here  by  divine  authority  enjoined ; 
but,  on  the  contrary,  the  restriction  of  an  ancient  and 
inveterate  custom  within  limits,  necessary  to  guard  it 
against  the  horrible  abuse,  to  which,  except  under 
responsible  supervision,  it  would  obviously  be  subject. 
National,  as  well  as  individual  education,  is  a  process, 
not  an  mstant  result.  Many  things  were  accordingly 
permitted  to  the  Jews  for  a  time,  on  account  of  the 
"  hardness  of  their  hearts  " ;  the  Law  aiming  at  no  more 
for  the  present,  than  to  check  their  worst  evil  conse- 

*  Numb.  V.  9,  10. 


326  NUMBERS  I.   1.  — X.  10.  [  LECT. 

quences,  and  lay  a  basis  for  their  ultimate  complete 
removal.  A  practice,  similar  to  the  present,  is  known 
to  have  existed  in  other  countries.*  It  probably  existed 
anciently  among  the  Jews  ;  and  the  connexion  in  which 
it  comes  before  us,  following  immediately  as  it  does 
upon  passages  occupied  with  the  duties  and  preroga- 
tives of  the  priests,  indicates,  to  my  mind,  that  all  that 
was  now  done,  was  to  place  it  within  the  watch  and  con- 
trol of  the  priestly  authority.  To  do  this  was  evidently 
a  great  step  of  security  against  the  mischiefs,  to  which, 
under  less  responsible  management,  it  would  be  likely 
to  lead.  For  as  long  as  the  superstidon  lasted,  and  the 
trial  might  be  made  without  such  intervention,  there 
was  nothing  to  prevent  a  husband,  excited  by  jealousy, 
or  pretending  to  be  so,  from  administering  a  poisoned 
potion,  and  then,  when  it  took  effect,  pretending  that  it 
was  the  supernatural  penalty  of  his  guilty  partner's 
crime. 

Nothing  of  this  kind  could  take  place  under  the  law 
before  us.  The  water  of  jealousy  could  only  be  ad- 
ministered by  the  priest,  who  would  naturally  be  inter- 
ested rather  in  favor  of,  than  against,  a  helpless  stranger, 
subjected  to  so  dreadful  an  ordeal  on  grounds  of  mere 
suspicion.  He  might,  it  is  true,  be  bribed ;  but  so  might 
some  other  ruffian  be  bribed  to  commit  a  murder,  at  less 
expense,  and  under  circumstances  much  less  perilous 
to  the  perpetrator.  It  would  hardly  be  worth  any  one's 
while  to  tamper  with  him  for  the  commission  of  such 
an  act,  when  he  must  commit  it,  if  at  all,  under  circum- 

•  Proof  of  the  use,  in  antiquity,  of  ordeals  of  this  kind,  may  be  seen 
in  Philostratus,  «De  Y\\k  Apollonii,"  lib.  1,  cap.  6,  p.  7,  (Edit.  Leip.,)  Pau- 
sanias,  "  Grjecise  Descriptio,"  lib.  7,  cap.  25,  ad  calc.  Mungo  Park  found 
practices  somewhat  similar  in  Africa.  See  his  "Travels"  &c,,  pp.  176, 
251.  (New  York  Edit.)  See  also  Geddes'  "Critical  Remarks,"  p.  305, 
note ;  and  Oldendorp,  "  Geschichte  der  Mission  der  Evangelischen  Brii- 
der,"  buch  3,  absch.  5,  s.  296. 


XIV.]  NUMBERS  I.   1.  — X.   10.  327 

Stances  of  the  greatest  publicity,  involving  vastly  more 
chances  of  detection  than  would  accompany  its  com- 
mission at  the  husband's  home,  in  some  remote  part  of 
the  country,  where  he  was  surrounded  only  by  inferiors 
and  dependents.  Who,  plotting  against  another's  life, 
would  think  of  consummating  his  crime  in  the  most 
public  place  of  his  country,  under  the  attentive  eye  of 
its  hierarchy,  in  the  sanctuary  of  God  ? 

The  adjuncts,  here  attached  to  this  practice,  seem 
to  have  been  designed  to  accomplish  its  disuse;  and, 
in  this  connexion,  it  is  a  fact  worthy  of  notice,  that, 
throughout  the  subsequent  history,  not  a  single  instance 
is  recorded  of  the  ordeal  in  question  having  been  ap- 
plied. The  arrangements,  prescribed  in  such  detail, 
appear,  indeed,  to  have  taken  away  from  a  jealous  hus- 
band all  motive  for  resorting  to  the  process.  If  he  had 
proof  of  his  wife's  guilt,  of  course  there  was  no  occa- 
sion for  resorting  to  it.  She  was  then  to  be  stoned 
immediately  on  conviction.  If  he  could  find  no  better 
basis  for  the  charge,  than  in  his  own  uncharitable  imagi- 
nation, he  would,  on  all  common  principles  of  action, 
sooner  suppress  it,  than  expose  his  fancied  dishonor 
in  the  most  public  manner  possible,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  subject  himself,  in  order  to  do  so,  to  burdensome 
expenses ;  for  at  least  he  must  make  a  journey  to  the 
sanctuary  with  his  wife,  even  if  the  expenses  there  of 
the  pompous  process  he  had  demanded,  amounted  to  no 
more  than  the  cost  of  the  "  offermg  of  jealousy."  If  he 
believed  or  fancied  her  guilty,  but  without  proof,  he  had 
an  easier,  cheaper,  and  on  all  accounts  more  satisfactory 
remedy  in  a  simple  divorce,  for  which,  effected  by  his 
own  unquestioned  act,  sufficient  liberty  was  allowed. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  public  manner  in  which  the 
trial  was  now  directed  to  be  made,  if  made  at  all,  added 
to  the  superstitious  view  already  entertained  by  the 


328  NUMBERS  I.  1.  — X.  10.  [LECT. 

people  of  its  efficacy,  would  tend,  almost  unavoidably, 
to  prevent  its  use.  The  apprehension  of  being  sub- 
jected to  it,  operating  on  sensitive  minds,  would  go  far 
to  prevent  any  freedoms  of  behaviour,  which  might  ex- 
cite a  jealous  feeling.  And  a  guilty  woman  would  hardly 
allow  herself  even  to  be  brought  to  the  trial ;  for,  apart 
from  the  fear  of  the  actual  supernatural  infliction,  she 
could  not  flatter  herself  that  she  would  be  so  far  proof 
against  the  awful  solemnities  of  the  scene  and  ritual,  as 
not  to  betray  her  guilt  ;  she  could  not  be  sure,  that 
through  a  designedly  complicated  and  protracted  cere- 
monial, so  arranged  in  all  respects  as  to  work  upon 
her  fancy  and  her  fears,  —  her  face,  contrary  to  all 
Oriental  habit,  exposed  to  public  view,  —  her  courage 
would  hold  out  to  carry  her  through  such  a  scene,  not 
betraying  her  guilty  secret  by  a  faintness  or  a  blush. 
She  would  sooner,  by  a  timely  confession  of  the  crime, 
throw  herself  on  the  mercy  of  him  whom  she  had  wrong- 
ed. She  would  then,  at  worst,  only  meet  a  httle  earlier, 
and  with  much  less  exposure,  the  death,*  which  in  any 
event  must  be  her  doom ;  while,  if  she  became  her 
own  accuser,  there  would  be  some  hope  of  forgiveness, 
and  of  that  concealment  of  her  crime,  which,  if  detec- 
tion were  to  follow  on  a  public  investigation,  would  be 
no  longer  possible.f 

ii 

•  I  am  not  even  certain  that  death  could  be  inflicted  for  any  crime  merely 
confessed  by  the  perpetrator.  The  Law  required,  as  we  shall  see,  that, 
in  capital  execution,  the  witnesses  should  take  the  lead. 

f  Further,  submission  to  this  ordeal  was,  for  aught  that  appears,  an  en- 
tirely voluntary  act  on  the  woman's  paut,  and  such  has  in  fact  been  the 
view  of  the  later  Jews.  Of  course,  a  person  conscious  of  guilt  would 
not  take  the  risk  of  it  If  there  was  proof  of  her  supposed  offence,  the 
ordeal  would  not  be  proposed  to  her.  If  there  was  no  proof,  she  would 
reject  it,  and  rather  brave  the  only  consequence  she  could  then  incur,  that 
of  divorce.  —  Maimonides'  notion  of  the  use  of  this  ordeal  was,  that  it 
secured  domestic  quiet,  by  influencing  a  wife  to  avoid  all  occasions  of  dis- 
pleasure on  her  husband's  part    "  Istud  enim  permovet  omnem  mulierem 


XIV.]  '  NUMBERS   I.   1.— X.   10.  329 

If  the  wife,  in  the  courage  of  her  innocence,  were  to 
offer  herself  to  the  trial,  it  would  naturally  make  the 
husband  ashamed  of  his  doubts,  or  at  least  unwilling  to 
commit  himself  by  proclaiming  them  in  so  conspicuous 
a  manner ;  the  rather,  as,  if  he  should  obtain  no  con- 
firmation of  them,  he  would  necessarily  expose  himself 
to  severe  reproach  for  having  groundlessly  resorted  to 
so  extreme  a  measure.  And  a  single  instance  of  the 
trial  having  been  resorted  to,  without  resulting  in  any 
confirmation  of  the  suspicions  entertained,  —  which  must 
be  the  consequence,  unless  there  were  both  guilt,  and  a 
supernatural  visitation  of  it,  —  would  probably  deter,  for 
a  long  period,  from  any  repetition  of  the  experiment. 

But  it  will  still  be  said,  that  an  express  declaration  is 
made,  of  a  supernatural  punishment  of  the  sin.  Here  is 
the  stress  of  the  question.  And  for  myself,  I  entertain 
little  doubt  that  the  words  convey  a  different  sense 
from  what  has  been  ascribed  to  them.  I  understand 
them  to  refer  to  the  infliction,  which  the  superstition  of 
the  time  anticipated  from  the  ordeal  of  jealousy,  when 
taken  by  a  guilty  person,  and  to  declare,  that,  at  all 
events,  it  is  not  to  be  looked  for  till  all  the  ceremonies 
previously  prescribed  shall  be  gone  through;  —  not  that 
it  will  take  place  then,  but  that  it  will  not  take  place 
before.f     And  this  view,  I  conceive,  is  strikingly  con- 

viro  junctam,  ut  exactissim^  sibi  caveat,  ne  cor  mariti  sui  segritudine 
afficiat,  propter  metum  aquarum  muJieris  declinantis.  Nam  etiam  inno- 
centes  mulieres  plerteque,  et  qiise  bene  sibi  sunt  conscite,  omnibus  suis 
facultatibus  actionem  illara  ignominiosam  redimerent,  quinimo  mortem 
jucundiorem  haberent,  quam  publicam  illam  ignominiam,  qua  caput  mulie- 
ris  discooperiebatur,  capilli  detondebantur,  vestimenta  usque  ad  pectus 
dilacerabantur,  atque  ita  ligata  in  Sanctpario  in  conspectu  omnium  vi- 
rorum  et  mulierum,  totiusque  Synedrii  magni  sistebatur.  Ob  hujus  ergo 
rei  timorem  magni  et  exitiales  morbi  ordinem  domesticum  destruentes 
impediti  fuerunt."  —  "  More  Nebochim,"  pars  3,  cap.  49,  p.  499. 

t  This  is  no  unusual  form  of  speech.  Compare  e.  g.  Matt  xviii.  17, 
where  every  one  understands,  not  that  we  are  in  duty  bound  to  treat  a 

VOL.  I.  '42 


330  NUMBERS  I.  1.  — X.  10.  [LECT. 

firmed  by  the  fact,  that  there  is  no  direction  to  stone 
the  criminal,  whose  conviction,  supposing  it  to  have  su- 
pernaturally  taken  place,  would  have. exposed  her  to 
that  last  sentence  of  the  Law.  If  it  be  supernatural 
conviction  which  is  here  spoken  of,  it  is  impossible  to 
explain  why  the  crime,  aggravated  by  the  effrontery 
with  which  its  denial  had  been  persisted  in,  and  made 
so  notorious  by  the  manner  of  its  detection,  should  be 
punished  merely  by  disease  and  shame,  instead  of  that 
death  which  the  Law  denounced  against  it. 

A  similar  remark  is  perhaps  more  manifestly  just 
respecting  the  provisions  for  the  Nazarite  vow  in  the 
next  chapter.  Here  is  no  new  institution,  but  the  regu- 
lation of  -an  old  usage,  mainly,  as  it  would  seem,  for  the 
purpose  of  rendering  it  inconvenient,  burdensome,  cost- 
ly, and  thereby  infrequent.  It  is  not  mentioned  as  a 
new  institution,  but  the  contrary.  "  When  either  man  or 
woman  shall  separate  themselves  to  vow  a  vow  of  a 
Nazarite,"  &c.*  It  was  an  observance  to  which  the 
Jews,  from  fashion,  fancy,  or  old  association,  were  ad- 
dicted. It  did  not  require  to  be  absolutely  forbidden. 
But  it  had  no  good  claim  to  be  encouraged.  A  Jew, 
therefore,  might  -make  the  vow,  if  he  would ;  but,  if  he 

person  "  as  a  heathen  man  and  a  publican,"  under  the  cirpumstances  de- 
scribed, but  that  it  will  be  time  enough  to  do  so  when  those  circumstances 
have  occurred  ;  that  we  are  not  to  do  it  before.  —  And  after  all,  in  a  mat- 
ter so  peculiar,  a  question  of  translation  might  well  be  raised.  Other 
considerations  apart,  it  would  be  altogether  unsafe  to  build  an  important 
theory  upon  a  passage  of  such  dubious  rendering.  The  verb  in  the  last 
clause  of  verse  21,  (repeated  in  verses  22  and  27,)  translated  in  our  version 
"  swell,"  occurs  nowhere  else,  and  it  is  out  of  the  question  to  say  that  we 
are  sure  of  its  meaning;  and  the  word  rendered  "rot,"  is  simply  the  com- 
mon verb  signifying/a//,  (^33,)  and  might  be  understood  of  the  faintness 
consequent  on  agitation.  I  am,  however,  proposing  no  new  translation, 
but  only  urging  that  we  cannot  defend  that  which  is  received,  with  suffi- 
cient confidence  to  found  upon  it  any  important  conclusion.  See  pp.  17, 18. 
•  Rather,  "shall  signalize  himself"  by  such  a  vow,  shall  wish  to  attract 
attention  by  it.    Compare  Lev,  xxvii,  2,  and  the  remark  on  it,  p.  308, 


XIV.]  NUMBERS   I.  1.-,-Xj  10.  331 

made  it,  he  must  pay  for  it ;  so  that  this  use,  at  least, 
his  will-worship  would  have,  that  it  would  tend  to  the 
more  liberal  support  of  the  ecclesiastical  estate.  Besides 
refraining  from  all  inebriadng  liquor,  and  from  every 
natural  or  manufactured  product  of  the  vine,  and  letting 
his  hair  grow  long,  observances  which  probably  belong- 
ed to  the  ancient  institution,*  a  Nazarite,  under  the 
present  regulation,  must  refrain  from  mourning,  even 
for  his  nearest  relatives  ;  if,  by  accident,  he  should  ap- 
proach a  dead  body  during  the  term  of  his  vow,  he 
must  present  an  offering,  and  begin,  all  over  again,  the 
series  of  his  consecrated  days ;  and  when  the  term 
specified  in  his  vow  had  expired,  he  must  repair  to  the 
Tabernacle,  and  offer  costly  sacrifices  of  all  the  different 
kinds.t  1  can  only  see,  in  the  spirit  of  these  arrange- 
ments, a  purpose  to  obstruct,  in  two  different  ways,  a 
propensity  to  the  ostentations  of  will-worship.  A  vow^ 
which  no  one  was  under  obligation  to  make,  must  now 
be  made,  if  at  all,  at  the  expense  of  considerable  time 
and  trouble,  at  serious  pecuniary  cost,$  and  under  the 
inconvenience  of  all  the  anxiety  which  would  be  felt  lest 
the  accident  of  a  contracted  impurity  should  require  a 
new  beginning  of  the  consecrated  term.  There  is  a 
principle  of  human  nature,  —  the  pride  of  sanctity, — 
which  would  overcome  all  this  difficulty,  and  be  even 
stimulated  by  it.  And  against  this,  too,  an  effectual  pre- 
caution is  taken.  The  impulse  of  the  ostentatious  devo- 
tee would  naturally  be,  to  signalize  his  self-denial  in  the 
view  of  others,  by  making  his  vow  for  a  long  term.  But 
here  the  Law  met  him  on  his  own  ground.  It  pre- 
scribed costly  offerings  at  the  sanctuary,  which,  how- 

•  Numb.  vi.  3    5.  t  vi.  6-21. 

I  The  case  of  Paul,  (Acts  xxi.  23,  24,  26,)  shows,  that  tiie  poor,  if  they 
made  this  vow,  brought  themselves  under  the  embarrassment  of  depend- 
ing upon  charity  for  its  execution. 


332  NUMBERS   I.   l.  —  X.  10.  [LECT. 

ever,  were  not  to  be  presented  till  the  Nazarite  term 
was  over,  making  him  liable  to  the  opposite  imputation 
of  niggardliness,  if  his  vow  should  be  for  a  long  period, 
and  especially  if  it  should  be  for  life.  The  shorter  the 
time  specified  in  it,  the  sooner  would  he  be  able  to 
exhibit  himself  to  the  priests  and  people  in  all  the  glory 
he  had  coveted.* 

In  the  benediction  which  Aaron  was  directed  to  pro- 
nounce upon  the  people,  as  often  as  there  should  be 
occasion  for  any  such  form  of  address,  it  is  very  proba- 
ble, that  there  was,  in  the  way  of  antithesis,  some  refer- 
ence to  idolatrous  forms  which  had  prevailed.  But  all 
that  at  the  present  day  .we  can  see  is,  that  use  was  to 
be  made  of  the  opportunity,  to  remind  them  whose 
blessing  it  was  for  which  they  must  look,  the  name 
Jehovah  being  the  leading  name  in  each  clause ;  a  cir- 
cumstance which  is  also  expressly  adverted  to  in  the 
last  verse.f 

The  donations  of  the  princes  of  the  several  tribes, 
on  twelve  successive  days,  enumerated  in  the  seventh 
chapter,  have  been  commonly  understood  as  having  been 
made  immediately  after  the  dedication  of  the  Taberna- 
cle ;  but,  I  think,  erroneously.  No  such  inference  can 
be  safely  made  from  the  first  verse  of  this  chapter ;  for 
the  word  "  day,"  is  freely  used  for  time  in  general,  and 
indeed  the  interpretation,  which  should  here  put  on  it 
the  most  literal  sense,  is  contradicted  by  what  we  pres- 
ently after  read  of  the  presentation  having  occupied 
twelve  days.     On  the  other  hand,  the  need  for  some 

*  In  Lev.  XXV.  5,  we  have  seen  a  reference  to  the  Nazarite  institution 
as  already  existing.  For  authorities  showing  that  rites  resembling  those 
of  Jewish  Nazariteship  were  practised  among  the  Egyptians  and  other 
ancient  nations,  see  Spencer,  "  De  Legibus  "  &c.,  lib.  3,  cap.  6,  diss.  1, 
§§  1,  3.  Compare  a  fragment  of  Chseremon  the  Stoic,  in  Porphyry,  "  De 
Abstinentia,"  lib.  4,  §  6. 

t  Numb.  vi.  22-27.    Compare  Psalm  iv.  6  ;  Ixvii.  1. 


XIV.]  NUMBERS  I.   1.  — X.   10.  333 

of  the  articles  presented,  did  not  arise  till  the  separate 
services  of  the  Levites  had  been  assigned.*  Some  ex- 
pressions used,  denote  that  that  service  had  already  been 
arranged,  and  the  census  already  made;t  and  the  offer- 
ings of  the  several  princes  were  made  from  Judah  to 
Naphtali,  in  the  order  in  which  their  respective  tribes 
were,  at  the  beginning  of  the  second  month,  arranged 
around  the  Tabernacle. 

The  offerings  of  all  the  princes  were,  no  doubt  by 
previous  concert,  the  same ;  consisting  of  plate  and  in- 
cense for  the  use  of  the  Tabernacle.J  Each  prince  also, 
in  his  tribe's  behalf,  brought  an  ox,  and  each  two  princes 
a  wagon,  for  the  transportation  of  the  sacred  edifice.^  Of 
these,  four  wagons,  each  with  its  yoke  of  oxen,  were 
assigned  to  the  family  of  Merari,  to  whom  belonged  the 
conveyance  of  the  more  bulky  parts  of  the  structure, 
and  two  wagons  to  that  of  Gershon,  who  had  charge  of 
its  hangings  ;  while  that  of  Kohath  needed  none,  "  be- 
cause the  service  of  the  sanctuary,  belonging  to  them, 
was,  that  they  should  bear  upon  their  shoulders."  || 
Thus,  in  all  respects,  care  was  taken  to  interest  the 
tribes  in  their  place  of  common  worship,  as  their  com- 
mon property.  And  the  accompanying  ceremony,  in- 
cluding the  presentation  of  victims  for  the  different 
kind  of  offerings,^  was  apparently  intended  to  be  a 
solemn  individual  recognition  by  each  tribe  of  that  com- 
mon place  of  worship  as  its  own ;  a  relation,  too,  in 
which  all  stood  on  a  footing  of  dignified  equality.  To 
this  end,  through  twelve  successive  days,  the  princes 
appeared,  followed  each,  it  is  likely,  by  a  procession  of 
his  tribe,  to  lay  its  rich  offering  upon  the  common  altar ; 
and  further  to  cement  the  union,  each  day  of  the  mo- 
mentous celebration  was  made  a  day  of  festivity  for  the 

•  Numb.  vii.  7,  8.  f  vii.  2,  5.  J  Tii.  84-86, 

§  viL  2,  3.  11  vii.  6-9.  H  vii.  87,  88. 


334  NUiMBERS   I.   1.— X.  10.  [  LECT. 

whole,  by  the  rich  Feast  Offering  which  made  part  of 
the  tribute.     ■ 

The  last  verse  of  the  seventh  chapter,  should,  I  think, 
be  detached  from  that  connexion,  and  made  part  of  the 
narrative  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  chapter,  to 
which  it  is  merely  the  introduction.  This  passage  ap- 
pears to  be  an  account  of  the  first  lighting  of  the  lamp 
in  the  Holy  Place,  which  was  henceforth  never  to  go 
out.*  That  apartment  being  without  windows,  its  gor- 
geous furniture  would  not  be  visible  to  those  authorized 
to  enter  it,  till  the  lamp  had  first  been  lighted.  The 
event  was  of  sufficient  interest  to  deserve  a  special 
commemoration,  and  the  influence  which  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  only  light  would  have  on  the  effect  intend- 
ed to  be  produced  on  the  minds  of  beholders,  entitled 
this  to  be  the  subject  of  a  special  direction.  The  seven 
lights  were,  as  it  seems,  to  compose  one  cluster,  all 
turned  inwards  towards  the  centre  of  the  room. 

The  arrangement  for  the  Tabernacle  service  being 
now  all  completed,  and  the  Levites  prepared  for  their 
appointed  work,  they  are  directed  to  be  set  apart  for  it 
by  proper  ceremonies  of  consecration.t  These  cere- 
monies are  simple,  consisting  merely  in  the  ablution  of 
those  who  were  to  be  dedicated,  accompanied  by  the 
offering  of  two  young  bullocks,  the  one  for  a  Sin  Offer- 
ing, the  other  for  a  holocaust.  A  little  change  is  now 
made  in  the  provision  respecting  their  term  of  service. 
It  had  been  before  decreed,  that  they  should  serve  at 
the  Tabernacle  from  the  age  of  thirty  to  that  of  fifty 
years.J     The  number  thus  furnished  had,  perhaps,  ap- 

*  It  is  not  unlikely,  that,  among  the  donations  of  the  twelve  days,  oil 
had  been  brought  by  the  princes  or  others,  for  the  use  of  the  lamp.  (Com- 
pare Lev.  xxiv.  2.)  But  of  this  we  do  not  read,  unless  n'l.tOp  in  the  14th 
and  corresponding  verses  will  bear  that  sense,  which  I  think  it  scarcely 
will.    See  however  Psalm  Ixvi.  15. 

t  Numb.  viii.  5-22.  t  iv.S. 


V 


XIV.]  NUMBERS   I.   1.  — X.  10.  335 

peared  to  Moses,  on  reflection,  too  small ;  or  those  ex- 
cluded from  it,  for  want  of  a  litde  more  age,  had  been 
ambitious  of  the  honor,  and  solicited  their  share  in  it ; 
or  it  was  thought  fit  to  distinguish  the  Levitical  office 
from  the  more  dignified  one  of  priests,  which  is  be- 
lieved to  have  been  entered  on  at  the  age  of  thirty. 
At  all  events,  the  rule  now  introduced  was,  that,  at 
twenty-five  years  of  age,  the  Levites  should  hence- 
forward enter  on  the  appropriate  duties  of  their  tribe, 
and  after  the  age  of  fifty  be  subject  to  no  other  de- 
mand, than  to  "  minister  with  their  brethren  in  the 
Tabernacle  of  the  Congregation,  to  keep  the  charge, 
and  do  no  service."  * 

The  first  relation  in  the  ninth  chapter  is  clearly 
retrospecdve,  being  an  introduction  to  the  record  of  the 
rule  prescribed  for  such  as  had  been  prevented  from 
keeping  the  passover  at  the  proper  time.f  It  should 
accordingly  be  translated  in  the  same  manner  with  sev- 
eral others  in  the  book  ;  t  "  The  Lord  had  spoken  unto 
Moses  in  the  wilderness  of  Sinai,  in  the  first  month 
of  the  second  year  after  they  were  come  out  of  the 
land  of  Egypt,  saying,  *  Let  the  children  of  Israel  also 
keep  the  passover  at  his  appointed  season,  in  the  four- 
teenth day  of  this  month.' "  On  this  first  occasion  of 
keeping  the  passover,  which  occurred  after  the  Exodus, 
it  appears,  that,  in  consequence  of  regulations  which 
had   been  meanwhile  enacted,  a  new  question   arose, 

*  Numb.  viii.  24-26.  I  have  given  above  what  seems  to  me  the  most 
probable  view,  resulting  from  a  comparison  of  these  two  texts,  which, 
however,  some  commentators  propose  to  reconcile  by  understanding  the 
service  referred  to  in  iv.  3,  to  be  the  special  service  of  conveying  the 
Tabernacle  and  its  furniture,  which,  say  they,  required  full  strength,  and 
was  therefore  committed  to  the  most  mature  and  robust  portion  of  those 
designated  for  the  general  service  of  the  Tabernacle  in  viii.  24.  The 
Alexandrine  version  has  in  iv.  3,  a  reading  which  avoids  the  discrepance 
in  the  reckoning  of  years. 

t  Compare  ix.  1  -  5,  6-  14.  J  E.  g.  i.  47. 


336  NUMBERS  I.   1.  — X.  10.  [  LECT. 

which  now  had  to  be  settled.  "  There  were  certain 
men  who  were  defiled  by  the  dead  body  of  a  man, 
that  they  could  not  keep  the  passover  on  that  day ; 
and  they  came  before  Moses  and  before  Aaron  on 
that  day ;  and  those  men  said  unto  him,  *  Wherefore 
are  we  kept  back  that  we  may  not  offer  an  oftering 
to  the  Lord,  in  his  appointed  season  among  the  chil- 
dren of  Israel  1 '  "  Moses  suspended  the  question,  till 
he  should  "hear  what  the  Lord  will  command,"  and 
received  the  direction,  that  whoever  was  unavoidably 
hindered  from  keeping  the  festival  at  its  proper  time, 
on  the  fourteenth  day  of  the  first  month,  should  ob- 
serve it  on  the  same  day  of  the  second,  which,  prob- 
ably, on  this  occasion,  immediately  followed  the  days 
occupied  by  the  twelve  princes  in  making  their  offer- 
ing. And  in  this,  as  in  other  respects,  it  is  added, 
that  the  same  rule  should  have  force  for  the  stranger, 
(that  is,  the  circumcised  stranger,  the  proselyte,*)  "as 
for  him  that  was  born  in  the  land." 

In  connexion  with  the  preparations  for  the  approach- 
ing decampment,  we  have  now  a  repetition  of  the  state- 
ment respecting  the  signal  by  which  the  encampment 
and  the  marches  were  regulated.  As  the  first  removal 
of  the  Tabernacle  had  not  yet  taken  place,  the  passage 
must  be  regarded  as  a  remark  inserted  by  Moses,  after 
the  course  of  operations  described  in  it  had  occurred, 
—  in  which  case  it  seems  a  natural  preface  to  his 
record,  which  follows,  of  the  first  movement,  —  or  as, 
possibly,  an  interpoladon  by  some  later  hand.f 

*  Ex.  xii.  48. 

f  The  passage  has  some  bearing  upon  the  theory  of  the  miraculous 
character  of  the  appearance  of  cloud  and  flame.  At  verse  19  it  is 
said,  that  "  when  the  cloud  tarried  long  upon  the  Tabernacle,  many  days, 
then  the  children  of  Israel  kept  the  charge  of  the  Lord,  and  journeyed 
not"  But,  from  verse  23,  it  would  appear  that  this  command,  which  they 
■o'  observed,  was  ^ven  through  Moses'  instrumentality ;  that  is,  that  it 


XIV.]  NUMBERS  I.  1.  — X.  10.  337 

The  last  act  of  preparation  for  the  intended  move- 
ment, is  the  fabrication  of  two  trumpets  of  silver,  to  be 
used  henceforward  in  giving  signals  on  various  impor- 
tant occasions,  civil,  ecclesiastical,  and  military.*  These 
trumpets  were  to  be  blown  by  the  priests;  another 
favorable  distinction  of  their  order,  and  another  office 
connecting  them  with  the  responsible  parts  of  national 
administration.  The  blowing  of  both  trumpets  was  to 
call  together  "all  the  assembly,"  that  is,  as  I  undef- 
stand,  a  full  representation  of  the  tribes,t  to  the  door 
of  the  convention-tent.  The  blowing  of  one  only 
was  to  convene  the  phylarchs.  Four  successive  blasts, 
in  a  particular  ah*,  called  in  our  version  "an  alarm," 
were  to  set  in  motion  the  several  camps.  In  all  com- 
ing times,  this  "alarm"  in  the  perils  of  war,  was  to  be 
an  appeal  to  Jehovah's  protection ;  and  the  sound  of 
these  same  trumpets  was  to  usher  in  the  days  of  re- 
ligious festivity. 

was  Moses  who  regulated  the  appointed  signal.  ^  At  the  commandment 
of  the  Lord  they  rested  in  their  tents,  and  at  the  commandment  of  the 
Lord  they  journeyed ;  they  kept  the  charge  of  the  Lord,  at  the  command- 
ment of  the  Lord,  by  the  hand  of  Moses." 

*  Numb.  X.  1-10.  —  In  this  passage  (10)  we  have  the  first  mention  of 
what  are  commonly  called  the  "new  moons";  viz.  the  holiday  celebra- 
tions of  the  first  day  of  each  lunar  month.  Probably  the  practice  was 
ancient  The  ritual  is  described  further  on,  at  Numb,  xxviii.  11-15. 
The  occasion  was  festive  (Numb.  x.  10 ;  1  Sam.  xx.  5,  24),  though  the 
prohibition  of  labor  on  one  new  moon,  viz.  the  Feast  of  Trumpets,  (Lev. 
xxiii.  24,  25,)  implies  that,  on  other  such  days,  labor  was  allowable. 

t  See  p.  165. 


VOL.  I.  43 


338  NUMBERS  X.  11— XIX.  22.  [LECT. 


LECTURE   XV. 

NUMBERS   X.    11.— XIX.  22. 

Decampment  from  "the  Wilderness  of  Sinai." — Place  of  the 
Levites,  and  of  the  Ephraimites,  on  the  March.  —  Discon- 
tent OF  the  People.  —  Commission  of  Seventy  Elders.  — 
Miraculous  Supply  of  Quails.  —  Mortality  at  Kibroth- 
Hattaavah.  —  Insubordination  of  Aaron  and  Miriam,  and 
Punishment  of  the  Latter.  —  Spies  sent  to  explore  Canaan. 

—  Discouragement  of  the  People  at  their  Report. — Post- 
ponement of  the  Invasion  for  Forty  Years,  denounced. — 
Battle  with  the  Amalekites,  and  Defeat.  —  Ritual  of  cer- 
tain Offerings.  —  Stoning  of  a  Sabbath-Breaker.  —  Regula- 
tion FOR  A  Uniform  Dress.  —  Rebellion  and  Punishment  op 
KORAH,  Dathan,  Abiram,  and  On.  —  Miraculous  Testimony  to 
Aaron's  Authority,  by  the  Budding  of  his  Staff.  —  Arrange- 
ment op  the  Sacerdotal  and  Levitical  Revenues.  —  Ritual 
OF  THE  "Water  of  Separation." — Question  respecting  thk 
Date   of   Occurrences   related  in  the  Last   Five  Chapters. 

—  Recapitulation  of  Earlier  Events. 

The  people  had  now  been  eleven  months  encamped 
by  Mount  Sinai.  At  the  end  of  one  month  after  leaving 
Egypt,  they  had  come  "unto  the  wilderness  of  Sin, 
which  is  between  Elim  and  Sinai."  *  From  Sin  they 
had  come  to  Rephidim,  and  from  Rephidim,  "in  the 
third  month,"  f  to  Sinai.  Here  the  first  elementary  law 
had  been  given,  and  the  directions  respecting  the  Tab- 
ernacle, the  execution  of  which  occupied  the  rest  of  the 
year.  "  In  the  first  month,  in  the  second  year,  on  the 
first  day  of  the  month,  the  Tabernacle  was  reared  up."  t 
During  this  first  month,  the  Law  in  the  book  of  Leviti- 
cus was  delivered ;  and  in  the  early  part  of  the  second, 

•  Ex.  xvi.  1.  t  Ex.  xviL  1 ;  xix.  1.  {  Ex.  xl.  17. 


XV.]  NUMBERS  X.  11.  — XIX.  22.  339 

the  organization  was  completed.  All  was  now  ready 
for  the  intended  movement.  "  And  it  came  to  pass,  on 
the  twentieth  day  of  the  second  month,  in  the  second 
year,  that  the  cloud  was  taken  up  from  the  Tabernacle 
of  the  testimony,  and  the  children  of  Israel  took  their 
journeys  out  of  the  wilderness  of  Sinai ;  and  the  cloud 
rested  in  the  wilderness  of  Paran.*  And  they  first  took 
their  journey,  according  to  the  commandment  of  the 
Lord,  by  the  hand  of  Moses." 

In  part  of  the  arrangement  of  the  march,  we  seem 
to  see  an  alteration  from  what  had  been  originally  pro- 
posed, to  secure  what  was  obviously  a  more  convenient 
course  of  procedure.  In  the  original  plan,  before  the 
Levitical  families  had  been  set  apart  for  separate  tasks, 
it  had  been  directed,  that,  after  two  divisions  of  the 
tribes  had  proceeded  on  the  march,  then  "  the  Taber- 
nacle of  the  congregation "  should  "  set  forward,  with 
the  camp  of  the  Levites  in  the  midst  of  the  camp."  f 
When  the  host  actually  made  its  first  movement,  the 
Levitical  families  having  received  meanwhile  each  its 
separate  charge,  we  find  that  after  the  first  division  of 
three  tribes  had  gone  forward,  "  the  Tabernacle  was 
taken  down ;  and  the  sons  of  Gershon  and  the  sons  of 
Merari  set  forward,  bearing  the  Tabernacle;"  while, 
after  the  second  division  of  three  tribes,  "  the  Kohathites 
set  forward,  bearing  the  sanctuary,  and  the  other  did  set 
up  the  Tabernacle  against  they  came."  t 

*  This  mention  of  Paran,  (Numb.  x.  12,)  as  the  place  where  the  ark 
rested,  appears  to  indicate  that  the  tenth  chapter,  and,  if  so,  then  probably 
the  latter  part  of  the  ninth,  as  well  as  the  eleventh  and  twelfth,  were 
•written  at  once,  after  the  encampment  at  that  place.  For  there  were  at 
least  two  stopping-places  between  Sinai  and  Paran.  See  xi.  34,  35 ;  xiL 
16.     Compare  xxxiii  16-18. 

f  u.  17. 

X  X.  17,  21. — I  cannot  dwell  on  each  one,  so  numerous  are  they,  of  the 
unobtrusive  arguments,  of  the  nature  of  that  which  this  passage  supplies, 
for  the  authenticity  of  the  writing.    But  who  can  believe  that  a  composi- 


340  NUMBERS  X.  11.  — XIX.  28.  [LECT. 

Another  part  of  the  arrangement  deserves  remark. 
It  is,  that,  while  the  tribe  of  Ephraim  was  the  rear- 
guard of  the  whole  army  while  in  camp,  it  was  not  so 
on  the  march,  but  retained,  probably  as  a  post  of  honor, 
its  position  immediately  after  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant.* 

The  urgency,  which  Moses  used  to  induce  Hobab  to 
remain  with  him  as  his  guide,  has  been  the  subject  of 
remark  in  another. place. t  The  few  words  recorded  as 
having  been  used  by  Moses  when  the  ark  removed  and 
rested,  are  probably  to  be  understood  as  constituting 
respectively  the  first  verses  of  hymns  which  were  used 
on  these  occasions.! 

The  fire,  which  is  said  at  the  beginning  of  the 
eleventh  chapter  to  have  "consumed  them  that  were 
in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  camp,"  has  been  differ- 
ently understood  as  denoting  the  Simoom,  lightning,  or 
a  burning  of  the  dry  shrubbery  of  the  desert,  which 
had  extended  to  some  tents  on  the  outskirts  of  the  en- 
campment. In  preference,  however,  to  either  of  these 
interpretations,  I  would  adopt  a  suggestion  which  has 
been  made,  that  "  the  fire  of  the  Lord "  here  denotes 
the  divine  displeasure,  which  is  often  said  to  "burn," 
and  to  "  consume,"  and  is  spoken  of  as  being  "  kindled," 
in  the  same  verse.^     So   understood,  the   first  three 

tion  of  a  comparatively  modem  period  would  have  been  made  to  con- 
tain the  record  of  an  alteration  like  this  ? 

•  Numb.  X.  21,  22.  f  x.  29  -  331    See  p.  150. 

J  X.  35,  36.  What  I  suggest  is,  that  the  meaning  is  the  same  as  if 
we  should  say.  The  congregation  sang  '*  Before  Jehovah's  awful  throne  " ; 
that  is,  the  psalm  beginning  with  that  line. — "  The  ark  of  the  covenant 
of  the  Lord  went  before  them  in  the  three  days'  journey,  to  search  out  a 
resting-place  for  them  "  (verse  33) ;  not  in  the  van,  which  would  contra- 
dict verse  21,  but  in  their  presence ;  Dn'JsVj  in  their  company,  in  their 
midst 

§  xi.  1  -3.  Compare  10, 33.  See  Druaius,  "  Commentarius  ad  Dif.  Loc. 
Num.,"  cap.  43.  Compare  Ps.  Ixxviii.  21,  where  this  incident  is  referred 
to,  as  the  context  will  show.  —  On  the  exposition  which  I  propose,  the 
first  half  of  verse  1,  is  a  compendious  statement  of  what  is  related  in  the 


XV.]  NUMBERS   X.  11.  — XIX.  22.  34F 

verses  present  but  a  concise  statement  of  the  occur- 
rence, which  is  narrated  in  detail  through  the  rest  of 
the  chapter.  We  there  read,  that,  some  of  the  meaner 
sort  of  the  people  *  having  broken  out  into  mutinous 
expressions  of  discontent,  on  account  of  their  Umited 
supply  of  food,  so  different  from  the  luxurious  variety, 
to  which  they  had  been  accustomed  in  Egypt,  Moses 
was  directed  to  promise  them  a  miraculous  provision, 
abundant  beyond  their  utmost  wishes.  Flocks  of  quails 
were  accordingly  seen  pouring  into  the  camp,  which  the 
people  greedily  collected  and  devoured.  But  hardly 
had  they  done  so,  — "  the  flesh  was  yet  between  their 
teeth,"  —  when  a  pestilence  broke  out,  to  which  num- 
bers (we  are  not  told  how  many)  fell  victims.  It  is,  I 
suppose,  commonly  understood,  that  the  divine  displeas- 
ure, thus  expressed,  was  what  had  been  occasioned  by 
the  people's  discontented  language.  I  incline  to  think, 
however,  that  the  writer's  intention  was  rather  to  rep- 
resent the  mortality  as  consequent  upon  the  avidity  with 
which  they  fed  upon  the  unusual  food  miraculously 
furnished.  Either  the  game  of  the  desert  was  at  that 
season  unwholesome,!  and  the  design  was  to  admonish 
them,  by  severe  experience  of  this,  not  to  murmur 
henceforward  on  account  of  wanting  what  their  divine 


first  part  of  the  chapter ;  the  second  half,  of  what  is  related  in  the  latter 

part  No  objection  arises  from  two  significant  names  being  given  to  the 
same  place  (Numb.  xi.  3,  34).     Compare  Ex.  xvii.  7. 

•  The  "  mixed  multitude,"  spoken  of  here,  and  in  Ex.  xii.  38,  have 
been  understood  to  be  other  than  Israelites.  I  know  not  why.  Moses' 
word  nQ30X  is  of  a  composition  which  would  be  not  ill  represented  by 
our  ruff-scuff,  or  riff-raff.  I  understand  him  to  be  speaking  of  the  meaner 
sort,  who  had  not,  like  others,  flocks  and  herds,  to  which  they  could  have 
recourse  for  animal  food ;  and  he  applies  to  them  a  disparaging  expres- 
sion, on  account  of  their  disorderly  conduct  "They  lusted,  even  those 
children  of  Israel  wept  again,"  &c.  (4.) 

t  Respecting  the  unwholesomeness  of  this  food,  at  certain  times,  see 
Bochart,  "Hierozoicon,"  pars  2,  pp.  97  -  100. 


342  NUMBERS  X.   11.— XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

protector  did  not  see  fit  to  afford ;  or  else,  in  their 
turbulent  eagerness,  they  had  devoured  the  quails  with- 
out first  divesting  them  of  the  blood,  a  course  which  had 
been  prohibited  in  the  most  peremptory  manner,  and 
which  was  now  punished  either  by  its  natural  effect 
upon  the  systems  of  those,  who  were  accustomed  to 
the  use  of  Httle  animal  food,  or  by  a  direct  miraculous 
visitation  of  Him  whose  distinctly  and  repeatedly  ex- 
pressed will  it  violated.* 

Meanwhile,  as  another  means  of  winning  the  people 
to  a  better  mind,  and  reviving  the  spirits  of  their  leader, 
desponding  under  such  repeated  experience  of  their 
perversity,  seventy  eminent  individuals  of  their  number 
are  summoned  to  the  Tabernacle  to  witness  a  manifesta- 
tion of  the  divine  presence,  similar  to  what  had  been 
i^^jStmade  on  former  occasions,  and  receive  a  commission  to 
aid  Moses  in  his  charge.f     The  narration,  that  two  of 

*  For  remarks  applicable  to  Numb.  xi.  11-15,  see  p.  105  ;  compare  Ex. 
xxxii.  7-14,  31,  32.  —  "Two  cubits  high  upon  the  face  of  the  earth" 
(31).  Not  that  they  lay  in  heaps  of  that  height,  but  that  they  flew  at  that 
distance  above  the  ground.  The  words  admit  that  sense,  and  it  is  given 
in  the  Vulgate. 

t  Numb.  xi.  16,  17,24-30.  It  has  been  thought  that  the  number  of 
the  elders,  viz.  seventy,  had  reference  to  the  aggregate  number  of  the 
twelve  phylarchs,  (i.  5-15,)  and  of  the  fifty-eight  heads  of  families  (xxvi. 
5  -  50).  The  later  Jews  have  supposed  that  here  was  the  origin  of  their 
national  Sanhedrim,  or  Great  Council  of  Seventy.  But  there  is  no  reason 
to  suppose,  that  the  institution  of  any  permanent  magistracy  is  here  re- 
lated, nor  do  we  read  of  the  existence  of  any  such,  previous  to  the  cap- 
tivity. Their  task  in  "  prophesying,"  as  Moses'  assistants  in  quieting  the 
people,  (25,  26,  30,)  was  that  of  his  spokesmen,  or  exhorters,  according  to 
a  common  use  of  the  original  word  in  Scripture,  and  indeed  of  the  word 
prophesy  in  the  old  English.  Compare  Ex.  iv.  16;  vii,  1,  2.  The  promise 
(17)  to  "take  of  the  spirit"  which  was  upon  Moses,  and  "put  it  upon 
them,"  is  evidently  to  impart  to  them  a  measure  of  authority,  and  endow- 
ments for  persuasion  and  command,  like  his.  —  With  xi.  25,  compare  Ex. 
xxxiii.  9,  10.  —  "They  prophesied  and  did  not  ceowe."  The  word  is  iflp^. 
Probably  we  should  read,  with  the  Samaritan,  ^Spjj;.,  and  render,  "  and 
two  of  the  men  had  not  been  congregated  with  the  rest,  but  remained  in 
the  camp,"  &c. ;  compare  26.  —  "The  Lord  came  down  in  a  cloud^ 

A-.- 


^'    XV.]  NUMBERS  X.  11.  — XIX.  22.  343 


if 


the  persons  designated  to  this  duty  of  "prophesying, 
that  is,  exhorting  the  people  to  a  better  conduct,  entered 
upon  their  office  without  first  repairing  to  the  Taberna- 
cle, and  of  the  freedom  from  any  jealous  feeling  with 
which  Moses  heard  of  their  proceeding,  is  interesting  to 
a  reader  of  the  present  day,  chiefly  on  the  ground,  that 
it  w^as  an  incident,  which  Moses,  writing  at  the  time, 
would  naturally  record,  but  which  a  writer  of  any  later 
period  would  scarcely  have  cared  to  invent  or  preserve. 
The  occasion  or  pretence  of  the  temporary  disaffec- 
tion of  Aaron  and  Miriam  from  their  brother,  which 
makes  the  subject  of  the  twelfth  chapter,  is  said  to  have 
been  his  having  married  an  Ethiopian,  or  rather  Cu shite, 
woman.  Most  expositors  have  understood  this  circum- 
stance to  imply  a  second  marriage  of  Moses,  not  related 
in  the  history ;  both  because  they  have  doubted  whether 
Zipporah,  who  was  from  Midian,*  could  properly  be 
called  a  Cushite,  and  because  it  seems  to  them  unrea- 
sonable to  suppose,  that  an  unsuitable  marriage  was  now 
made  a  ground  of  complaint,  when  it  had  been  con- 
tracted so  many  years  before.  But,  as  to  the  first  point, 
it  appears  very  probable  that  the  people  of  Midian  might 
properly  be  called  Cushites ;  f  and  the  alliance  of  Moses 
with  a  foreigner  might  naturally  enough  be  seized  on 
as  a  ground  of  factious  complaint,  and  his  obligation  to 
divorce  her  be  urged,  now  that  he  was  raised  to  so 
peculiar  an  authority  over  his  countrymen ;  not  to  say, 
that,  at  this  particular  juncture,  his  brother  and  sister 
may  have  been  stimulated  by  jealousy  of  the  appre- 
hended influence  of  Hobab,  the  brother  or  uncle  of 
Moses'  wife,  who  had  lately  been   prevailed  upon  to 

(25),  might  equally  well  be  translated,  into  the  cloud ;  and  so  in  xii.  5. 
But  both  renderings  appear  equally  inconsistent  with  the  supposition  of 
his  perpetual,  peculiar  presence  at  the  cloud  over  the  Tabernacle. 

*  Ex.  ii.  16,  21.  t  See  Bochart's  «  Phaleg,"  lib.  4,  cap.  2. 


344  NUMBERS  X.  11.— XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

remain  near  his  person.  However  this  might  be,  the 
discontent  of  individuals  of  so  much  note  and  influence, 
and  such  near  affinity  to  the  leader,  needed  to  be  pun- 
ished in  so  summary  and  conspicuous  a  manner,  as  to 
discourage  similar  attempts  in  future  from  the  same 
quarter ;  and,  to  this  end,  an  infliction  of  the  fearful  and 
loathsome  disease  of  leprosy  is  employed  to  make  Miri- 
am feel  the  folly  and  hopelessness  of  such  an  enter- 
prise, while  (her  punishment  being  sufficient  to  enforce 
the  lesson)  Aaron  is  spared,  either  because  of  his  more 
prompt  repentance,*  or  to  avoid  unnecessarily  lessening 
the  reverence,  due  from  the  people  to  the  exalted  office 
which  he  held.t 

From  "  the  wilderness  of  Paran,"  to  which  their  few 
days'  march  had  brought  the  people,  on  the  southern 
border  of  the  promised  land,  Moses  (at  their  own  in- 
stance, as  appears  from  the  parallel  passage  in  Deu- 
teronomy t)  sends  out  a  party  of  twelve  men,  one  from 
each  tribe,  to  explore   the   country,  and  report   their 

•  Numb.  xii.  11. 

f  «  Hath  he  not  also  spoken  by  us  ?  "  (2.)  Compare  Lev.  x.  8 ;  xi.  1 ;  xiiL  1, 
et  al.  h.  m.  —  "  The  man  Moses  was  very  meek."  (3.)  This  text  has  been  the 
subject  of  much  discussion.  I  find  no  difficulty  in  it.  The  more  common 
meaning  of  the  word  rendered  "  meek,"  is  distressed,  miserable.  And  so 
I  have  no  doubt  it  should  be  rendered  here.  Moses  does  not  laud  himself, 
but  very  naturally  speaks  of  the  great  trials  of  his  situation.  And  this 
view  explains  the  other  peculiarity  of  expression  in  the  same  sentence  ; 
"the  man  Moses."  b>:n,  "the  man,"  is  a  word,  conveying  a  sense  of  dig- 
nity. Compare  Ps.  xlix.  2  ;  Prov.  viii.  4.  It  is  as  if  he  had  said  ;  Moses, 
exalted  as  was  his  place,  was  now  the  most  wretched  of  men. —  In  verse 
4,  (as  in  Numb.  xi.  1-3,)  I  think  we  have  a  concise  statement  of  what  is 
presently  related  more  in  detail.  Compare  5.  —  "If  there  be  among  you 
a  prophet,"  or  an  announcer  of  my  will,  (as  Aaron  and  the  seventy 
elders  had  been,)  I  reveal  myself  to  him  in  a  way,  which,  compared  with 
the  clearness  and  fulness  of  my  disclosures  to  Moses,  is  but  what  a  dream 
or  a  vision  is  to  a  reality  (6) ;  what  a  similitude,  a  portraiture,  is  to  the 
substance  (8) ;  for  "  and  the  similitude,"  should  rather  be  rendered,  "  nor 
the  similitude  of  the  Lord"  alone  ;  not  the  mere  shadowing  forth  of  the 
Lord's  will  shall  Moses  behold. 
J  Deut  i.  22. 


XV.]  NUMBERS   X.   II.  — XIX.   22.  346 

observations  on  its  attractiveness,  and  its  capacity  of 
defence  against  the  proposed  invasion.  They  traverse 
the  region  in  its  whole  length,  from  Hebron  to  Hamath, 
from  its  southern  to  its  northern  boundary ;  and  returning, 
after  a  forty  days'  search,  declare,  that  it  was  as  fertile 
as  it  had  been  described,  but  that  its  inhabitants  were 
so  warlike,  and  so  well  secured  in  their  strong-holds, 
that  it  would  be  rashness  to  attempt  to  dispossess  them. 
Two  of  the  twelve  alone,  Caleb  and  Joshua,  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  great  tribes  of  Judah  and  Ephraim, 
brought  a  different  report,  assuring  the  people,  that,  with 
a  proper  energy  on  their  own  part,  and  with  the  bles- 
sing of  their  guiding  God,  they  might  presently  make 
a  successful  inroad,  and  bring  their  great  enterprise  to 
the  desired  issue.  The  more  timid  counsels,  however, 
prevailed.  The  pusillanimous  multitude  shrank  from 
the  hazard,  deplored  their  folly  in  having  left  Egypt, 
and  were  near  stoning  Caleb  and  Joshua  for  endeav- 
ouring to  excite  them  to  a  more  worthy  conduct. 

It  was  now  proved,  that  they  were  not  yet  prepared 
for  an  undertaking  requiring  so  much  vigor  as  the  con- 
templated invasion.  Until  their  cowardly,  unenterpris- 
ing character,  not  unnatural  in  just  emancipated  slaves, 
should  be  superseded  by  the  spirit  of  men  reared  in 
freedom,  it  was  fit  they  should  be  kept  in  such  a  de- 
gree of  retirement  and  safety,  as  was  allowed  by  a  No- 
madic life  in  a  country  not  permanently  occupied.  They 
needed  time  to  consolidate  their  commonwealth,  to  fa- 
miUarize  their  institutions,  and  form  a  national  character, 
before  they  should  enter  on  such  a  task  as  was  before 
them.  They  are  accordingly  told,  that  they  must  aban- 
don the  design  of  the  projected  invasion,  till  forty  years 
shall  have  expired  from  the  time  of  their  emigration 
from  the  land  of  their  bondage,  and  till  another  genera- 
tion shall  have  succeeded,  of  a  character  more  equal  to 

VOL.  I.  44 


346  NUMBERS  X.  11.— XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

the  occasions  of  the  time.  Their  fickleness,  under  the 
sting  of  this  rebuke,  now  displays  itself  in  the  opposite 
direction.  Ashamed  of  their  late  fears,  and  hoping, 
perhaps,  that  some  display  of  valor  would  cause  the 
mandate  to  be  recalled,  they  persist,  against  Moses' 
remonstrances,  in  attacking  a  party  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  country ;  but  are  defeated  with  much  slaughter, 
and  desist  from  any  further  attempt.* 

*  Numb.  xiii.  xiv.  —  The  mention  of  the  ripening  of  grapes  (xiii.  20) 
indicates  the  time  to  have  been  the  month  of  September,  or  Tizri  of  the 
second  year.  —  The  messengers,  it  is  to  be  presumed,  did  not  conduct 
their  search  (21)  in  a  body,  but  dispersed  themselves,  going  singly,  or  two 
or  three  together.  A  natural  inference  from  their  going  and  coming  with- 
out observation,  is,  that  their  language  was  essentially  that  of  the  Canaan- 
ites.  Compare  p.  5.  —  The  proper  names  of  men  in  verse  22, 1  take  to  be 
used  collectively,  as  the  names  of  descendants  from  one  stock.  Compare 
Judges  i.  3.  —  The  relation  in  verse  23  has  been  a  subject  of  cavil. 
But,  on  any  exposition,  what  kind  of  argument  can  be  made  out  of  it,  to 
discredit  the  record  ?  Supposing  the  representation  to  be,  what  it  has 
been  imagined  to  be,  that  a  single  cluster  of  grapes  was  too  heavy  for 
one  man's  strength,  so  far  from  indicating  a  forgery,  it  would  rather  sus- 
tain an  inference  of  the  opposite  character ;  for,  in  such  a  matter,  the 
apparent  exaggeration  would  be  as  manifest  to  a  forger,  as  to  a  true  nar- 
rator, and  a  forger  is  scrupulously  studious  of  verisimilitude.  But  the 
truth  is,  that  the  word  h'3V)ii  has  by  no  means  the  same  limitation  of  sense 
with  our  word  cluster ;  that  (apart  from  this)  what  was  carried  was,  "  a 
branch  with  one  cluster,"  an  expression  naturally  conveying  the  same 
meaning,  as  if  one  should  say,  "  a  branch  all  covered  with  grapes  " ;  that 
one  of  the  great  clusters  of  grapes  of  that  country,  (which,  according  to 
■well  authenticated  modern  accounts,  sometimes  weigh  ten  pounds  and 
more,)  might  be  carried  in  the  manner  described,  not  because  it  was  too 
heavy  for  one  man's  strength,  but  to  keep  it  from  being  injured  by  strik- 
ing against  the  person ;  and  that,  finally,  what  was  carried  upon  a  staff, 
between  two,  appears  to  have  been  some  vessel,  containing,  besides  the 
grapes,  a  quantity  of  pomegranates  and  figs.  —  Verse  24  I  can  hardly 
hesitate  to  account  a  gloss  from  some  recent  hand ;  and  I  make  the  same 
remark  upon  the  latter  half  of  verse  16,  which  is,  unless  I  greatly  err,  an 
explanatory  note  upon  verse  8,  comparing  it  with  other  places  where  the 
same  individual  is  mentioned  by  Moses.  These  observations  have  pre- 
cisely the  form,  in  wliich  a  modern  commentator  would  attach  a  note. — 
**  A  land  that  eateth  up  the  inhabitants  thereof  (32)  ;  that  is,  a  land 
either  unhealthy,  or  wasted  by  continual  wars.  Compare  xiv.  9;  Ez. 
xxxvi.  13.  —  With  Numb.  xiv.  10,  compare  Ex.  xvi.  10;  and  with  Numb. 


XV.]  NUMBERS   X.   11  —XIX.  22.  347 

A  careful  reader  of  this  narrative  is  naturally  led  to 
inquire;  Was  it  not  known  beforehand  to  the  Divine 
leader  of  the  Israelites,  that  they  were  not  as  yet  fit  to 
occupy  their  destined  posidon  in  Canaan,  nor  would  be- 
come so,  until  the  national  institutions  had  had  time  to 
form  a  national  character,  which  they  could  only  do 
through  the  education  of  a  younger  race  ?  Was  it  not 
then  designed  from  the  beginning,  that  there  should  be 
this  interval  between  the  emigration  and  the  invasion? 
And,  if  so,  with  what  propriety  can  the  delay  be  repre- 
sented, as  it  is,  in  the  light  of  a  punishment  of  their 
want  of  courage  in  not  being  willing  to  prosecute  the 
enterprise  at  once  to  its  completion  ? 

I  reply,  that  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  words,  the 
delay  was  a  punishment  of  their  pusillanimity ;  inasmuch 

xiv.  11-20,  compare  Ex.  xxxii.  7-14,  30-34.  See  p.  219.  Numb.  xiv. 
12  migfht  be  rendered  interrogatively,  but  it  is  unnecessary.  —  It  may 
be  doubted  whether  verses  22,  2.3  were  designed  to  be  understood  so  rig- 
idly as  is  commonly  supposed.  See  pp.  125,  133.  Compare  Matt.  iii.  5; 
iv.  23,  24.  If  it  be  said,  that  the  express  exception  of  Caleb  (24),  implies 
that  there  was  no  other  exception,  I  reply,  1.  that  it  might  be  fit  to  men- 
tion only  the  exemption  of  a  distinguished  person,  even  though  others  of 
less  note  were  exempt  also ;  and,  2.  that  there  certainly  was  (30,  38)  at 
least  one  other  person  exempt,  besides  Caleb.  If  the  strong  expres- 
sions in  verses  22-24  must  not  be  so  understood  as  to  exclude  Joshua, 
neither  can  it  be  positively  declared,  that  the  subsequent  strong  expression, 
(30)  which  includes  Joshua,  must  needs  be  so  construed  as  to  exclude  all 
others.  —  "These  ten  times"  (22),  indefinitely;  as  we  say,  "a  dozen 
times",  ''a  hundred  times",  "sexcenties".  —  "Your  children  shall  wan- 
der" (33);  literally,  shaW  feed;  shall  feed  cattle;  shall  lead  a  Nomadic 
life,  the  life  of  tlie  Bedouins  of  the  present  day.  — "  Ye  shall  know  my 
breach  of  promise  "  (34).  Much  ingenuity  has  been  expended  upon  this 
clause.  I  understand  it  to  mean  simply ;  See  whether  I  withdraw  from 
what  I  have  said  ;  You  shall  learn  by  your  experience,  whether  I  will  re- 
tract my  threat.  Compare  verse  35. —  Upon  verses  36-38,  which  inter- 
rupt the  connexion,  I  oiFer  the  same  observation  as  upon  xiii.  24.  I 
regard  the  passage  as  probably  a  gloss,  written  after  the  completion  of 
the  forty  years,  (though  possibly  indeed  from  Moses'  own  hand,)  recording 
the  ultimate  fulfilment  of  the  threat,  in  respect  particularly  to  the  ten  ex- 
plorers of  Canaan.  Possibly,  however,  it  was  a  record  (made  at  the  time) 
of  a  speedier  divine  judgment,  executed  upon  them  for  their  agency  in 
the  violence  related  in  verse  10. 


348  NUMBERS  X.   11.  — XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

as,  though  designed  beforehand,  it  was  designed  with 
reference  to  the  existence  of  that  fault.     It  was  this, 
which  made  the  delay  fit,  as  part  of  the  divine  plan  for 
them.     Its  occasion  would  have   been   removed,  had 
they  possessed  a  courage  equal  to  the  immediate  prose- 
cution of  their  undertaking ;  and,  accordingly,  the  only 
question  properly  presented  by  this  part  of  the  history 
is,  why  the  people  should  be  placed  in  a  condition  to 
manifest  distinctly  this  meanness  of  spirit  (as  they  did 
at  the  return  of  their  messengers),  and  then  be  told  that 
they  were  to  suffer,  in  consequence,  the  inconveniences 
of  an  unsettled  life  of   many  years,   rather   than   that 
they  should  have  had  their  wanderings  protracted  with- 
out any  explanation  of   the  cause,  or  that   the   cause 
should  have  been  signified  to  them  without  their  having 
first  given,  in  their  conduct,  any  manifestation  of  its  ex- 
istence.    And  I  apprehend  that  the  course,  which  we 
read  to  have  been  taken,  will  appear  to  any  one,  on  a 
Uttle  reflection,  to  be  the  course  which  might  have  been 
expected,  and  the  fittest  course  to  produce  the  effect 
designed.     Had  the  Israelites  been  detained  year  after 
year  at  a  distance  from  Palestine,  and  the  delay  been  in 
no  wise  explained,  there  would  have  been  no  reply  for 
Moses  to  give  to  the  remonstrances  of  their  discontent. 
Now,  as  often  as  they  expressed  impatience,  he  had  an 
answer  to  seal  their  lips  wuth ;  they  had  shown  them- 
selves unequal  to  the  work,  which  they  wished  to  hasten. 
Had  the  reason  of  the  delay  been  explained  to  be  their 
want  of  preparation,  still,  had  there  been  no  notorious 
fact  to  appeal  to,  in  proof  of  that  want,  its  reality  would 
have  been  denied,  and  the  argument  would  have  lost  its 
efficacy.     That  the  postponement  of  the  invasion  of  Ca- 
naan was  part  of  the  original  divine  plan, — that  there  was 
nothing  in  it  contingent  upon  the  people's  specific  misbe- 
haviour in  the  wilderness  of  Paran,  —  I  readily  allow. 


XV.]  NUMBERS  X.   11.  — XIX.  22.  349 

But,  in  addition  to  God's  knowing  their  want  of  prepa- 
ration, it  was  necessary  that  they  should  know  it  too ; 
both  to  make  them  acquiesce  more  readily  in  the  ar- 
rangement which  it  required  for  the  time  being,  and  to 
present  to  them  a  motive,  in  the  interval,  for  cherishing 
those  institutions,  and  forming  that  character,  which 
were  eventually  to  remove  the  defect. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  chapter,  the  Israel- 
ites are  addressed  with  some  new  regulations,  prescrib- 
ing additions  to  the  ritual  of  Burnt  and  Peace  Offerings, 
such  as  to  give  a  character  of  greater  sumptuousness 
to  those  ceremonies,  and  referring  to  the  ultimate  estab- 
Ushment  in  Canaan  as  a  thing  certain,  though  it  was  to 
be  so  long  deferred.  When  the  people  should  "be 
come  into  the  land  of  their  habitations  ",  and  be  better 
able  to  command  the  means,  they  were  to  accompany 
the  sacrifice  of  each  animal,  whether  a  kid  or  lamb,  a 
ram,  or  a  bullock,  with  a  Meat  Offering  of  flour,  a  Drink 
Offering  of  wine,  and  a  quantity  of  oil,  proportioned 
in  each  case  to  the  value  of  the  victim  which  was  im- 
molated. And  the  same  rules,  in  this  respect  as  in 
others,  were  to  be  observed  by  any  transient  sojourner 
in  the  country,  who  should  desire  to  testify  his  respect 
for  the  national  divinity ;  a  provision  obviously  intended 
to  prevent  departures  from  the  simplicity  and  uniformity 
of  the  ritual,  such  as  might  have  been  brought  in  through 
the  example  of  foreigners,  who  would  naturally  be  dis- 
posed to  dispense  themselves  from  a  punctilious  ob- 
servance of  it.* 

*  Numb.  XV.  1  - 16.  A  half  hin  of  wine,  and  the  same  quantity  of  oil, 
were  to  be  presented  with  each  bullock,  a  third  part  of  that  measure  with 
a  ram,  and  a  quarter  part  with  a  lamb  ;  of  flour,  the  proportions  were 
to  be  as  three,  two,  and  one.  The  flour  and  oil  were  to  be  made  into 
cakes.  The  present  law  is  an  extension  of  that  previously  given  (Ex. 
xxix.  40,)  in  respect  to  the  daily  Burnt  OflTering.  A  hin  was  a  little  over 
a  gallon.  A  "  tenth-deal "  was  probably  a  tenth  part  of  an  ephah,  which 
was  about  a  bushel. 


350  NUMBERS  X.  11.  — XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

'  We  have  next  a  direction  respecting  a  new  perquisite 
to  the  priests.  It  had  before  been  commanded,  that, 
at  every  Pentecost,  two  loaves  should  be  brought  to 
them  by  each  householder,  from  the  first-fruits  of  the 
wheat  harvest.  That  provision  is  now  so  extended  as 
to  give  them  a  similar  claim  to  a  loaf  made  from  the 
first  gatherings  of  all  kinds  of  grain,  its  size,  as  far  as 
we  know,  being  left  to  the  giver's  discretion.  This  law, 
like  the  last,  and  like  the  similar  one  of  older  date,  was 
first  to  go  into  effect  after  the  establishment  in  Canaan. 
The  whole  revenue,  designed  eventually  for  the  priest- 
hood, was  not  at  present  wanted,  while  the  number  of 
priests  was  so  small,  and  the  dignity  of  their  order,  in  a 
community  but  partially  organized,  did  not  require  so 
liberal  a  support  as  would  be  suitable  in  later  times. 
When  it  should  be  wanted,  it  would  be  afforded  all  the 
more  readily,  on  account  of  the  law  prescribing  it  being 
of  a  date  nearly  simultaneous  with  the  origin  of  the  in- 
stitution.* 

The  regulations  which  occupy  the  next  following 
verses,  I  think  have  been  correctly  understood  as  hav- 
ing reference  to  those  laws  respecting  sacred  offerings, 
a  portion  of  which  had  just  been  recited.  Whoever 
should  with  presumption  and  defiance  violate  those  laws, 
was  to  incur  the  high  penalty  which  is  called  "  cutting 
off  from  the  people."  The  individual,  who  should  break 
any  one  of  them  unintentionally  and  ignorantly,  was,  on 
coming  to  a  knowledge  of  the  transgression,  to  mani- 
fest his  repentance  by  presenting  a  Sin  Offering  of  the 
kind  formerly  described  ;  and  this,  whether  the  offender 
was  of  native  or  foreign  birth.t     If  a  like  error  had 

•  Numb.  XV.  17-21.  The  later  Jews  understood  this  law  as  binding 
thera  to  bring  first-fruits  of  five  kinds  of  grain ;  viz.  wheat,  barley,  oats, 
rye,  and  spelt.  For  the  previous  law,  respecting  two  wheaten  loaves 
at  the  Pentecost,  see  Lev.  xxiii.  17. 

t  Numb.  XV.  27-31.    Compare  Lev.  iv.  27  -  35. 


XV.]  NUMBERS   X.   11.  — XIX.  22.  351 

occurred  in  an  act  performed  in  behalf  of  the  nation, 
its  sense  of  the  fault  was  to  be  manifested  in  a  manner 
somewhat  altered  from  what  had  been  before  prescribed, 
and  more  costly  and  imposing.  Instead  of  a  bullock 
only  for  a  Sin  Offering,  which  had  been  first  ordained, 
a  Sin  Offering  of  a  kid  is  now  substituted,  to  be  ac- 
companied with  the  holocaust  of  a  bullock,  with  the 
addition  of  its  appropriate  Meat  and  Drink  Offerings,  as 
these  had  been  lately  regulated.  It  would  appear,  that 
as  the  people  became  more  familiar  with  the  law, 
there  was  a  fitness  in  repressing  infractions  of  it  by  an 
increase  of  the  penalty  incurred.* 

Next  follows  a  narrative,  apparently  having  no  other 
connexion  with  the  context  than  that  of  time,  and  in- 
serted in  its  place  as  the  record  of  a  passing  incident. 
A  sabbath-breaker  was  detected  in  the  act.  The  pro- 
ceedings against  him  were  dehberate ;  "  they  put  him 
in  ward,  because  it  was  not  declared  what  should  be 
done  to  him."  It  was  not,  that  there  was  any  doubt 
that  he  must  die ;  that  had  been  explicitly  determined 
by  previous  directions.!  But  it  was  the  first  instance 
which  had  called  for  an  infliction  of  the  threatened 
penalty,  and,  as  in  the  case  of  the  blasphemer,  the  son 
of  Shelomith,  Moses  had  first  to  seek  instruction  respect- 
ing the  manner  in  which  execution  should  be  done.  As 
in  that  instance,  to  make  the  punishment  exemplary,  he 

•  Numb.  XV.  22-26,  Compare  Lev.  iv.  13-21.  I  have  spoken  of 
this  law  as  having  reference  to  errors  in  the  observance  of  the  ritual,  as 
the  nature  of  the  topics  in  the  context  suggests.  Perhaps,  however,  it 
also  contemplated  an  extension  of  the  meaning  of  "Sins  of  Ignorance" 
on  the  part  of  the  congregation,  making  them  cover  the  case  of  the  com- 
mission of  any  offence  within  its  borders,  when  the  criminal  had  escaped 
detection.  Compare  verse  24.  Public  vigilance  would  be  stimulated,  by 
a  provision,  making  the  community  liable  in  what  was  virtually  a  fine,  for 
failing  to  ascertain  the  perpetrator  of  an  illegal  act  And  such,  in  fact,  as 
we  shall  have  occasion  to  see,  was  the  spirit  of  other  regulations. 

f  See  Ex.  xxxL  14 ;  xxxv.  2. 


352  NUMBERS  X.  11.  — XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

received  a  command  to  have  it  inflicted  in  the  presence 
of  the  congregated  people,  and  by  their  act ;  that  is, 
without  doubt,  by  the  agency  of  a  sufficient  portion  of 
them,  understood  to  be  proceeding  in  their  name,  and 
by  their  joint  authority.* 

The  chapter  concludes  with  a  brief  direction  to  adopt 
a  certain  peculiarity  of  national  costume,  which  should 
be,  to  the  wearer,  a  perpetual  memento  of  his  obliga- 
tions, as  a  member  of  the  favored  community  whose 
badge  was  upon  him.  It  is  a  familiar  principle  of  our 
nature  which  is  here  appealed  to;  the  same,  through 
which  the  soldier  is  reminded  by  his  gay  uniform,  and 
the  Quaker  by  his  modest  dress,  of  the  duties  and 
sentiments  with  which  the  characteristic  attire  of  pach 
is  associated  in  his  mind.f 

The  condition,  in  which  the  Israelitish  affairs  now 
were,  supposing  the  record  in  the  sixteenth  chapter  to 
relate  to  a  time  not  long  subsequent  to  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  design  of  an  immediate  invasion  of  Ca- 
naan, was  precisely  that  in  which  we  should  expect  to 
read  of  conspiracies,  if,  at  any  time,  they  were  to  occur. 
The  arrangement  of  the  political  and  sacred  administra- 
tion was  still  recent.  Of  course,  it  had  not  been  or- 
ganized, without  creating  disappointment  and  dissatis- 
faction on  the  part  of  some,  who  had  supposed  their  claim 
to  be  as  good  as  that  of  those  who  had  been  preferred 
to  them;  and  there  had  not  yet  been  opportunity  for 


•  Numb.  XV.  32-36.  Compare  Lev.  xxiv.  12-14.  If  we  are  to  under- 
stand the  words  "in  the  wilderness"  (32),  as  a  reference  to  Numb.  xii. 
16,  which  is  not  an  unnatural  interpretation,  the  place  and  time  of  this 
incident,  and  of  the  promulgation  of  the  laws  recorded  in  the  previous 
part  of  the  chapter,  are  fixed.     Compare  Deut.  i.  46. 

f  Numb.  XV.  37-41.  —  Le  Clerc,  ad  loc.  suggests,  that  the  selection 
of  the  color  of  the  High  Priest's  robe  (Ex.  xxxix.  22)  for  that  of  the 
badge,  may  have  been  designed  for  an  intimation  to  the  wearer,  that  he 
belonged  to  a  "  kingdom  of  priests,  an  holy  nation." 


XV.]  NUMBERS  X.  11.  — XIX.  22.  353 

time  and  the  habit  of  subordination  to  assuage  their  dis- 
content, or  for  the  partiality  of  their  retainers  and  parti- 
sans to  learn  acquiescence  in  the  established  order  of 
things.  On  the  other  hand,  the  people  were  depressed 
and  uneasy,  and  in  a  fit  state  to  be  tampered  with  by 
factious  leaders.  Mortified  as  they  must  have  been  by 
the  recollection  of  their  late  unworthy  conduct,  and 
goaded  by  the  thought  of  having  been  condemned,  in 
consequence,  to  renounce  the  hope  of  a  speedy  occupa- 
tion of  their  promised  home,  the  time  must  have  been 
favorable  for  engaging  them  in  a  rebellious  movement. 
They  would  then  have  been  ready,  if  ever,  to  lend  an 
open  ear  to  the  assurance,  that,  under  the  auspices  of 
other  leaders  than  those  who  had  lately  denounced 
against  them  the  sentence  of  such  a  weary  delay,  they 
might  be  able  forthwith  to  prosecute  the  enterprise,  on 
which  their  hearts  had  been  so  fondly  set.* 

If  the  circumstances  of  the  time  favored  the  de- 
signs of  conspirators,  the  conspiracy  of  which  we  read 
was  formed  by  precisely  the  persons,  whom  we  might 
expect  to  find  taking  advantage  of  any  prevailing  dis- 
content, to  propose  extreme  measures.  The  writer, 
who  betrays  no  solicitude  whatever  for  the  credit  of  his 
narrative,  abstains  from  any  exposition  of  the  circum- 
stances, to  which  I  here  refer ;  but  a  little  consideration 
brings  them  evidently  to  light.  There  are  two  parties 
to  the  plot ;  and  they  are  of  those,  whose  jealousy  would 
be  most  hkely  to  be  excited  by  the  recent  arrange- 
ments ;  who  would  most  easily  persuade  themselves, 
and  who  could  with  the  best  pretence  maintain,  that 
there  had  been  a  violation  of  their  rights.  Korah  was  a 
Kohathite,  descended  from  a  brother  of  the  progenitor  of 
Aaron,  perhaps  an  older  son  of  the  common  ancestor; 

•  See  Numb.  xvi.  13, 14. 

VOL.  I.  45 


^^ 


354  NUMBERS  X.   11.  — XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

and  if  any  ambitious  aspirant  was  to  look  with  an  en- 
vious eye  upon  the  possessor  of  the  highest  sacerdotal 
dignity,  his  position  marked  him  out  as  a  subject  for  that 
temptation.*  Dathan,  Abiram,  and  On,  were  descend- 
ants from  Reuben,  the  oldest  son  of  Jacob ;  and  so  be- 
longed to  the  tribe,  whose  pride  must  have  been  most 
wounded  (considering  how  much  the  rank  of  primo- 
geniture was,  among  that  people,  a  point  of  honor,)  by 
the  precedence  given  to  Judah,  in  the  encampments  and 
on  the  march. 

Moreover,  the  situation  of  these  two  parties  in  rela- 
tion to  one  another,  when  in  camp,  was  such  as  to  af- 
ford them  all  facilities  for  exciting  one  another's  passions, 
and  maturing  the  plot.  The  allotted  place  of  the  tents 
of  Reuben,  was  on  the  south  side  of  the  Court ;  and 
between  them  and  the  Tabernacle,  was  the  encamp- 
ment of  the  Kohathites,  the  division  of  the  Levitical 
family,  to  which  Korah  belonged. 

In  respect  to  any  imagined  incredibility,  in  the  con- 
cocting of  such  a  plot,  on  the  part  of  persons,  who  had 
seen  miraculous  attestations  of  the  divine  favor  to  those 
whose  authority  they  were  proposing  to  subvert,  I  con- 
ceive that  it  would  be  enough  to  say,  that  the  difficulty, 
be  it  greater  or  less,  consists  in  the  supposition  of  men's 
ever  acting  against  their  fixed  convictions  of  duty  and 
safety ;  that  the  opposition,  in  conduct,  to  the  persua- 
sions of  one's  mind,  is  the  unaccountable  thing,  (as 
far  as  any  thing  is  unaccountable,)  the  method  in  which 
such  a  persuasion  has  been  produced,  whether  natural 
or  supernatural,  not  diminishing  or  increasing  the  mar- 
vel, except  as  the  strength  of  the  persuasion  is  increas- 
ed ;  and  that  the  fact  of  men's  acting  against  their 
convictions  of  what  is   right   and  safe  is  one  of  too 

*  Compare  Numb.  xvi.  9-11. 


XV.]  NUMBERS  X.   11.  — XIX.  22.  355 

familiar  experience  to  admit  of  being  denied.  I  add, 
however,  that  with  the  imperfect  views  of  the  Deity 
which  these  conspirators  must  be  supposed  to  have 
entertained,  it  is  by  no  means  improbable,  that  they  may 
have  partly  persuaded  themselves  as  well  as  others,  that 
Moses  and  Aaron  had  acquired  their  precedence  by 
some  indirection,  or  that  the  wonders  which  had  been 
wrought  for  the  common  benefit,  had  no  necessary  per- 
manent connexion  with  their  authority,  and  that,  if  the 
people  should  declare  themselves  in  favor  of  other  rulers, 
their  Divine  guide  might  consent  to  a  transfer  of  their 
power.  Certain  it  is,  that  the  language  of  Korah  and 
his  associates  is  as  distinctly  that  of  recognition  of  Jeho- 
vah, as  of  oppugnation  to  the  lawgiver  and  high-priest.* 
The  insurrection  was  of  a  formidable  character.  It 
had  engaged  -a  large  number  of  considerable  men.  It 
was  not  to  be  suffered  to  succeed ;  to  suppose  this,  is 
to  suppose  that  the  divine  plan  for  the  accomplishment 
of  great  objects  was  to  be  frustrated,  or  to  be  furthered 
henceforward  by  departure  from  a  course  of  operation, 
which  hitherto  had  been  deliberately  pursued.  It  was 
not  to  be  suffered  to  be  repeated;  this  would  be  to 
permit  the  infant  state  to  be  subject  to  perpetual  haz- 
ards, machinations,  and  broils.  Advantage  was  taken  of 
the  occasion  to  enforce  a  lasting  lesson,  repressing  the 
tendency  to  such  baleful  manifestations  of  private  am- 
bition and  popular  discontent,  till  the  early  time  of 
weakness  and  danger  should  be  past.  To  effect  the 
object  thoroughly,  a  severe  supernatural  punishment  is 
inflicted.  An  earthquake  "swallowed  up  all  the  men 
that  appertained  unto  Korah,  and  their  houses,  and  all 
their  goods  " ;  and,  the  discontent  not  being  yet  allayed, 
but  breaking  out  in  complaints  on  the  following  day,  a 

•  Numb.  xvi.  3 ;  compare  5,  7,  28. 


356  S'v,       NUMBERS  X.  11.  — XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

further  visitation  of  divine  displeasure,  apparently  in 
the  form  of  sudden  disease,  swept  oft'  the  assailants 
by  hundreds,  till,  by  Moses'  direction,  Aaron  presented 
himself  in  their  behalf,  in  the  act  of  performing  a  func- 
tion of  his  office ;  and  then  "  the  plague  was  stayed,"  a 
second  divine  testimony  to  him  being  thus  given  by  its 
withdrawal,  as  the  first  had  been  by  its  infliction.* 

*  "Take  you  censers  "  &c.  (Numb.  xvi.  6,  7) ;  that  is,  if  you,  Korah,  as- 
pire to  be  high -priest  in  Aaron's  place,  and  your  retainers  to  be  priests 
instead  of  his  sons,  present  yourselves  to-morrow  with  censers  and  in- 
cense, (that  is,  prepared  to  execute  the  priestly  office,  compare  Ex.  xxx.  8,) 
if  your  claim  should  be  approved.  (Compare  5,  10,  17,  40.)  You  will 
then  see  that  it  is  not  I,  that  forbid  you,  but  God.  —  "Wilt  thou  put  out 
the  eyes  of  these  men  ?"  (14);  wilt  tliou  make  us  pretend  not  to  see  what 
we  do  see,  viz.  that  thy  promises  are  not  kept  ?  —  Verse  15  is  Moses'  ap- 
peal to  God ;  quasi,  thou  knowest  that  they  have  no  ground  for  discontent 
in  any  injustice  suifered  by  them  at  my  hands.  —  From  Korah's  present- 
ing himself  with  a  numerous  retinue  (19),  and  the  manifestation  of  divine 
power,  with  which  this  movement  was  immediately  followed,  (compare 
Ex.  xxxiii.  9 ;  Numb.  xii.  5 ;  xiv.  10,)  it  is  natural  to  infer  that  he  had 
meditated  a  forcible  establishment  of  his  claim.  —  With  verses  20  -  22, 
corppare  Ex.  xxxil  7-14,  and  the  remarks  thereupon,  at  pp.  218, 219.  But, 
perhaps,  by  "this  congregation"  (21),  was  meant  Korah's  company,  and 
the  command  "  separate  yourselves,"  was  intended  for  the  rest  of  the 
people,  agreeably  to  24-26;  in  which  case,  however,  it  would  appear  (22) 
that  Moses  and  Aaron  misunderstood  the  first  direction.  —  From  verse  24, 
it  appears  that  there  was  a  tent,  which  was  a  place  of  rendezvous  to  the 
leaders  of  the  revolt,  and  which  is  accordingly  called  "  the  Tabernacle  of 
Korah,  Dathan,  and  Abiram,"  though  the  dw'elling  of  Korah,  as  a  Levite, 
was  in  a  place  different  from  that  of  his  Reubenite  associates,  and  though 
at  present  they  were  apart,  he  being,  with  his  immediate  retainers,  before 
the  Tabernacle  (19),  and  they  at  the  door  of  their  own  tents,  which  they 
had  refused  to  leave  at  Moses'  invitation.  (12,  27.)  Whether  by  "  the 
ciders  of  Israel "  (25),  are  meant  the  confederated  princes  (compare  2),  or 
leaders  who  adhered  to  Moses,  might  be  doubted  ;  but  it  is  reasonable  to 
suppose,  that  both  these  descriptions  of  persons  followed  him,  the  scene 
of  the  contest  being  changed  by  his  departure  from  before  the  Taberna- 
cle.—  Dr.  Graves  ("Lectures  on  the  Pentateuch,"  Vol.  I.  p.  115  et  seq.) 
understanding  that  the  families  of  Dathan  and  Abiram  were  destroyed 
with  them  in  the  earthquake,  (27,  32,)  while  that  of  Korah  was  spared, 
(Numb.  xxvi.  11  ;  I  Chron.  vi.  22  ;  ix.  19,)  very  well  explains  tiie  fact,  by 
remarking,  that  Dathan  and  Abiram  were  at  their  tents,  the  dwellings 
of  their  families,  while  Korah  was  absent  from  his,  which  was  in  the 


XV.]  NUMBERS  X.  11.  — XIX.  23.  357 

To  the  point  of  the  number  of  victims  (which  is 
stated  at  about  fifteen  thousand),  I  do  not  think  that  we 
can  quote  the  record,  with  confidence  that  we  have  it 
as  it  proceeded  from  Moses'  hand ;  for,  as  we  shall  have 
occasion  more  particularly  to  observe  hereafter,  there 
are  no  parts  of  the  text,  which,  as  a  whole,  are  liable 
to  so  much  suspicion,  as  those  which  represent  figures. 

• 

quarter  of  Levi.  But  I  do  not  know  that  the  supposed  fact  existed. 
There  is  no  more  reason  to  suppose  that  the  families  of  Dathan  and  Abi- 
ram  were  confederates  with  their  head,  than  that  such  was  the  case  with 
the  household  of  Korah  ;  nor  are  we  told  (in  this  passage,  at  least),  that 
the  former  were  destroyed.  Nothing  is  recorded  inconsistent  with  the 
supposition,  that  the  wives  of  Dathan  and  Abiram  "  and  their  sons,  and 
their  little  children  "  who  "  had  come  out "  with  them,  "  and  stood  at  the 
door  of  their  tents,"  whence  escape  was  easy,  were  among  those,  who, 
alarmed  by  the  threat  of  Moses,  "  gat  up  from  the  Tabernacle  on  every 
side,"  (27.)  For  "  appertain,"  (30,)  a  word  supplied  by  our  translators, 
might  as  well  be  written,  adJiere.  By  "their  houses,"  (32,)  we  are  rather 
to  understand  their  tents,  than  their  households;  n''5  not  uncommonly 
meaning  a  fenf.  (See  Gen.  xxxiii.  17;  2  Kings  xxiii.  7.)  See,  further, 
Numb.  xxvi.  11 ;  Deut.  xi.  6,  with  my  remarks  thereupon. —  "And  there 
came  out  a  fire  "  &.c. ;  or,  "  and  from  the  Lord  the  fire  [just  spoken  of] 
proceeded,"  &,c.  Was  this  fire  a  subsequent  infliction,  or  a  volcanic  phe- 
nomenon of  the  earthquake  ?  Rather,  I  think,  the  latter.  Compare 
Numb.  xxvi.  10.  —  The  censers,  which  remained  in  the  dead  hands  of  the 
victims,  Eleazar,  Aaron's  oldest  son,  is  directed  to  collect,  and  having 
emptied  them  of  the  burning  incense,  to  cause  them  to  be  beaten  into 
plates,  to  be  nailed  upon  the  altar  of  burnt  offering  ;  that  so,  through  all 
ages,  in  the  most  public  place  of  the  nation,  they  might  admonish  every 
worshipper  of  the  wickedness  and  danger  of  any  such  ambition.  (36-40.) 
This  charge  is  trusted  to  Eleazar,  rather  than  to  Aaron,  probably  that  the 
high-priest  might  not  be  defiled  by  the  touch  of  corses.  —  In  verse  41,  I 
find  a  very  natural  expression  of  the  discontent  of  the  rebellious  party, 
considering  their  low  conceptions  of  God.  He  had  supematurally  punish- 
ed their  leaders;  that,  they  had  seen;  but  they  complained  of  Mose8 
and  Aaron,  that,  to  gratify  themselves,  they  had  prevailed  to  have  the  in- 
fliction made  so  severe.  And  to  this  misapprehension,  Moses'  interposi- 
tion in  their  behalf,  (44  -  48,)  to  arrest  the  worst  which  was  threatened, 
(45,)  afforded  the  most  conclusive  answer.  —  "They  looked  toward  the 
Tabernacle  of  the  congregation  "  (42) ;  that  is,  for  some  interposition  in 
their  behalf,  as  was  natural  in  their  alarm  ;  or  perhaps  they  turned  to  it, 
(ng;)  they  retreated  to  the  protection  of  that  degree  of  awe  which  it 
continued  to  inspire. 


358  NUMBERS   X.   11.  — XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

But,  at  all  events,  I  submit,  that,  in  our  partial  acquaint- 
ance with  the  circumstances,  we  are  not  prepared  to 
say  in  what  number  of  instances  an  extensive  and 
menacing  disaffection  needed  to  be  punished,  so  as  to 
exert  a  powerful  and  permanent  influence  on  the  minds 
of  three  millions  of  people.  If  the  object  for  which 
the  nation  had  been  set  apart,  was  one  worthy  of  the 
Divine  Being  to  entertain,  it  wsls  one  which  deserved  to 
be  protected  against  defeat,  at  any  sacrifice.  If  it  was 
threatened  by  any  seditious  movement,  such  a  move- 
ment needed  to  be  repressed  for  the  present,  and  its 
repetition  guarded  against  for  the  future.  If  this  was 
to  be  done,  how  was  it  to  be  done ;  that  is,  by  what 
choice  among  methods  suited  to  operate  on  the  human 
mind  1  The  use  of  natural  or  of  supernatural  method^, 
presents  the  only  supposable  alternative.  Will  any  one 
say,  that  the  use  of  natural  means  would  have  been  the 
better,  as  being  the  more  merciful  course ;  —  in  other 
words,  that  less  severity  might  be  expected  to  result 
from  letting  loose  the  warriors  of  Judah  (exasperated  by 
the  plot  against  their  precedency)  upon  those  of  Reu- 
ben, of  not  much  more  than  half  their  number,  or  by 
commitdng  the  punishment  of  a  pordon  of  the  Kohath- 
ites  to  the  hands  of  the  families  of  Merari  and  Gershon, 
already  as  jealous  of  their  pretensions,  as  they  were  of 
those  of  Aaron  and  his  sons  ?  So  far  from  a  greater 
severity  being  consequent  upon  the  supernatural  char- 
acter of  the  visitation,  is  it  not  unavoidable  to  own,  that, 
had  this  been  forborne,  the  other  tribes,  on  all  common 
principles  of  action,  would  have  taken  the  punishment 
of  the  rebels  into  their  own  hands?  And  then,  all 
motives  of  mutual  hostility  and  partisanship  having  op- 
portunity to  make  themselves  felt,  it  is  impossible  to 
conjecture  where  the  bloodshed  would  have  stopped  ; 
except,  indeed,  through  some  form  of  that  very  super- 


-Jl 


XV.  3  NUMBERS   X.  11.  — XIX.  22.  359 

natural  interposition,  which  the  scheme  we  are  consider- 
ing aims  to  avoid. 

A  supernatural  interposition,  then,  was  merciful  to  the 
sufferers,  as  it  stayed  the  less  cautious  hands  of  those 
whose  rights  had  been  invaded  by  the  plot.  The  other 
form  of  punishment,  moreover,  would  have  been  but 
partially  effectual,  inasmuch  as  it  would  have  left  any 
malecontents,  whom  it  did  not  cut  off,  in  a  condition  to 
say,  that  their  claim  was  defeated,  not  by  God's  will, 
but  by  man's  oppressive  power ;  and  it  would  have 
sowed  the  seeds  of  lasting  dissensions,  most  inimical  to 
the  common  weal,  while,  as  things  were  ordered,  God, 
by  taking  the  punishment  on  himself,  taught  the  more 
powerful  tribes,  that  it  was  not  necessary  for  them  to 
interfere  to  vindicate  his  law,  thus  repressing  a  jealous 
hostility,  which  else  would  have  not  unnaturally  broken 
out  upon  small  occasions. — And,  if  it  was  fit  that  su- 
pernatural powder  should  be  applied  at  all,  it  was  of 
course  fit  that  it  should  be  applied  in  the  production  of 
effects,  of  a  moment  proportioned  to  the  exigency; 
which  exigency  was,  in  the  present  instance,  the  mak- 
ing of  an  impression  sufficient  to  secure  the  people 
against  similar  movements  in  future,  —  movements, 
which,  unless  guarded  against,  threatened  nothing  less 
than  national  ruin,  and  what  was  much  more,  the  defeat 
of  the  inestimable  objects  for  mankind,  which  the  Jew- 
ish nation  had  been  organized  to  promote.* 

*  Righteous  punishment  is  not  vindictive,  but  has  one,  or  both,  of  two 
objects ;  viz.  the  reformation  of  tlie  transgressor,  or  security  for  the  pub- 
lic, through  warning  to  others  who  may  be  tempted  to  the  same  offence. 
In  respect  to  punishment  which  contemplates  the  latter  object,  i.  e.  ex- 
emplary punishment,  no  principle  is  more  familiar,  than  that  justice  and 
mercy  require  it  to  be  made  heavy  in  proportion  to  the  interests  which  are 
endangered.  Abstractly,  it  would  be  hard  to  put  a  man  to  death  for  be- 
taking himself  to  the  next  town.  If  the  man  were  a  soldier,  yet  if, 
through  his  insubordination,  nothing  were  lost  to  the  state  but  his  own 


360  NUMBERS  X.  11. -XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

Henceforward  we  do  not  read  of  any  organized  op- 
position to  the  divinely  instituted  authorities,  whether 
sacred  or  civil.  The  miraculous  testimony  in  Aaron's 
favor,  of  which  we  read  in  the  seventeenth  chapter,  I 
understand  to  have  been  designed  to  take  advantage 
of  the  state  of  feeling  which  the  recent  event  had  cre- 
ated, in  order  to  teach  a  further  lesson.  That  Aaron 
was  the  rightful  high -priest,  was  a  point  established  by 
the  late  divine  judgment  upon  those  who  had  oppugned 
his  claim.  The  time  was  favorable  for  teaching  the 
heads  of  the  respective  tribes,  that  he  was  the  superior 
of  them  all.  To  this  end,  the  twelve  phylarchs  are  in- 
vited by  Moses  to  bring  to  the  Tabernacle  each  his 
sceptre,  or  staff  of  office,  identifying  it  by  the  inscrip- 
tion of  his  name,  that  of  Aaron  being  written  upon  the 
rod  of  Levi ;  and  to  await  the  divine  decision  respecting 
the  precedency  of  one  of  their  number,  to  be  given  in 
the  form  of  miraculously  causing  his  staff  to  blossom. 
On  examination  of  the  rods  on  the  following  day,  that 
of  Aaron,  (whether  it  was  of  wood  or  of  metal,  we  are 
not  told,)  was  found  to  have  germinated  like  an  almond 

services,  his  life  would  still  be  too  great  a  sacrifice  to  exact  for  that  loss. 
But,  inasmuch  as  what  one  may  do,  another  may,  and  by  the  desertion  of 
a  sufficient  number  of  its  protectors,  a  country  might  be  left  defenceless, 
for  an  invader  to  ravage  it  with  fire  and  sword,  it  is  a  great  saving  of  life, 
and  consequently  a  provision  of  the  public  clemency,  to  punish  desertion 
with  death.  —  So  to  describe  some  black  characters  on  a  white  surface,  is 
abstractly  an  insignificant  act,  and  in  a  barbarous  community  might  well 
attract  no  animadversion ;  but,  in  consideration  of  its  consequences,  when 
done  under  certain  circumstances,  in  a  country  whose  great  interests  are 
sustained  by  mutual  confidence,  laws,  held  to  be  wise  and  lenient,  have 
called  it  forgery,  and  made  it  capital.  —  If  fifteen  thousand  lives,  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  had  bought  the  internal  peace  of  England  through  the 
next,  the  price  would  have  been  less  than  was  paid,  and  the  purchase 
better  than  was  realized.  —  In  the  case  now  before  us,  as  in  that  of  Na- 
dab  and  Abihu,  (Lev.  x.  1-5,)  and  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira,  (Acts  v. 
1-11,)  the  interests  at  stake  wore  great;  and  accordingly  benevolence 
dictated  that  the  methods  of  security  should  be  vigorous. 


XV.]  NUMBERS   X.   11. —XIX.   22.  361 

branch,  and  to  be  yielding  the  fruit  of  that  tree.  It  was 
directed  to  be  laid  up  at  the  Tabernacle,  in  perma- 
nent memory  of  the  transaction;  and  the  language  of 
the  people,  when  the  result  of  the  trial  was  made 
known,  indicates  the  impression  of  salutary  awe,  which, 
in  connexion  with  the  recent  disaster,  it  produced  upon 
their  minds.* 

As,  in  a  passage  of  the  preceding  book,t  we  saw  the 
rules  respecting  the  great  annual  celebrations,  which 
had  before  been  separately  exhibited,  brought  together 
in  one  view,  with  some  additions,  so,  in  the  chapter 
which  here  next  follows,  we  have  a  collection  of  pro- 
visions previously  announced,  relating  to  the  revenues  of 
the  sacerdotal  order ;  in  addition  to  w-hich,  it  is  now 

*  We  are  not  informed  what  means  were  taken  to  identify  the  rods 
which  were  produced,  as  heing  the  same  which  were  deposited,  beyond 
"  the  writing  of  every  man's  name  upon  his  rod."  According  to  the 
common  inference  from  verse  4,  viz.  that  Moses  was  to  lay  them  up  over 
night  in  the  Most  Holy  Place,  there  would  be  no  satisfactory  way  of 
identifying  them  ;  and  so  obviously  would  there  have  been  opportunity  for 
fraud,  that  it  is  hardly  to  be  supposed,  on  any  scheme,  that  Moses  would 
have  proposed  it.  The  rods  were  to  be  deposited  "  at  the  Tabernacle  of 
the  congregation,  in  the  presence  of  the  testimony  " ;  that  is,  in  the  sacred 
precincts.  It  is  to  be  presumed  that  they  were  sealed  up  in  one  recepta- 
cle, the  princes,  or  others  authorized  by  them,  watching  by  it  through  the 
night,  to  see  that  no  dishonesty  was  practised.  They  were  not  in  Moses' 
charge  ;  for  "  on  the  morrow,  Moses  went  to  the  Tabernacle  of  witness" 
(8)  to  examine  them.  —  The  view  which  I  have  given  in  the  text,  of  the 
special  object  of  this  miracle,  (according  with  the  fact,  that,  before  the 
period  of  the  kings,  the  high-priest  appears  to  have  been,  in  common  ' 
times,  the  head  of  the  nation,)  I  had  become  satisfied  was  correct,  before 
I  observed  the  question  of  Dr.  Geddes,  ("Critical  Remarks,"  p.  384,)  "Is  it 

credible,  that a  new  miracle  should  be  necessary  to  establish  the 

priesthood  of  Aaron  ?  "  an  inquiry,  of  which  this  view  removes  the  basis. 
Nor  is  it  in  any  degree  inconsistent  with  the  language  in  verses  5,  10,  12, 
13.  When  the  people  were  satisfied,  that  Aaron  was  not  only  rightful 
high-priest,  as  they  liad  been  taught  before,  but  that  he  was  above  all  the 
other  permanent  authorities  of  the  state,  as  they  were  instructed  now, 
and  that  his  rights  would  be  so  resolutely  vindicated,  their  consternation 
at  the  thought  of  having  so  opposed  him  became  extreme. 

t  Lev.  xxiii. 

VOL.  I.  46 


!^^ 


362  NUMBERS  X.  11.  — XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

for  the  first  time  distinctly  declared,  that  the  tithes, 
which  had  been  declared  to  be  "  holy  unto  the  Lord," 
were  appropriated  by  him  to  the  support  of  his  minis- 
ters the  Levites,  to  whom  the  further  direction  is  given 
to  make  a  similar  contribution  for  their  superiors,  to  that 
which  the  people  made  for  them ;  that  is,  to  give  to  the 
priests  a  tenth  part  of  their  tithes.*  In  addition  to  what 
has  been  already  said  upon  the  subject,  it  is  ob- 
vious to  remark,  that  the  rich  revenues  of  the  Priests 
and  Levites  would  have  an  effect  to  give  them  respecta- 
bility in  the  people's  view,  and  the  consequent  influence, 
which  It  was  important  to  the  general  well-being  that, 
they  should  possess,  besides  securing  that  influence  in 
favor  of  existing  institutions,  from  which  personally  they 
derived  so  much  advantage.  Again,  the  decree  that 
the  ministers  of  the  sanctuary  should  "  have  no  inheri- 
tance among  the  children  of  Israel,"  tended  manifestly 
to  secure  their  attention  to  their  proper  duties,  from 
which  the  care  of  landed  property,  might  they  hold  it, 
would  be  likely  to  seduce  them ;  while  their  dispersion 
in  small  settlements  of  their  own,  throughout  the  tribes, 
made  them  a  universal  bond  of  union  to  the  state,  and 
afforded  opportunity  for  the  instructions  of  the  Law, 
which  was  their  charge,  to  be  promptly  enforced,  wher- 
ever occasion  might  call  for  them.f 

*  Numb,  xviii.  21-32.    See  pp.  322,  323. 

t  This  chapter,  relating  to  the  support  of  the  priesthood,  well  connects 
itself  (1)  with  the  two  next  preceding,  in  which  events  are  recorded 
establishing  the  rank  of  Aaron  and  his  associates.  —  "They  may  be 
joined  "  (2) ;  iiS%  quasi,  they  may  be  Levited;  a  paronomasia  on  the  name 
'lS .  ^-  "  A  stranger  shall  not  come  nigh  unto  you  "  (4) ;  no  other  person  shall 
interfere. —  "That  there  be  no  wrath  any  more"  (5);  compare  Numb, 
xvi. — With  8-11,  compare  p.  255,  note  §;  with  12,  13,  compare  xv. 
1-21;  with  14-18,  Lev.  xxvii.  1-13,  26,  27;  and  with  21-24,  Lev. 
xxvii.  30-33.  —  "  The  best  of  the  oil "  &c.  (12) ;  literally,  the  fat ;  a  meta- 
phor in  common  use,  similar,  as  Geddes  well  suggests,  to  our  expression, 
the  cream  of  a  thing.  —  "A  covenant  of  salt"  (19) ;  a  thing  agreed  upon, 


XV.  J  NUMBERS  A.  11.  — XIX.  sa  863 

The  nineteenth  chapter  prescribes  a  new  ritual  for 
the  cleansing  of  impurities,  contracted  through  the  pres- 
ence of  dead  bodies.  On  the  one  hand,  it  was  the 
policy  of  the  Law  to  procure  their  speedy  interment ; 
both  with  a  view  to  the  general  health  and  comfort,  and 
also,  it  is  probable,  as  a  discouragement  to  the  supersti- 
tious Egyptian  practice  of  embalming.*  And  this  ob- 
ject would  be  well  secured  by  regulations  subjecting  a 
person,  who  approached  a  corse,  to  the  serious  incon- 
venience of  seclusion  from  society  for  some  days  after, 
and  the  observance  of  a  set  ceremonial  in  order  to  his 
restoration.  Under  such  a  liability,  every  one  would  be 
interested  to  see  that  a  body  was  soon  buried,  whether 
it  was  peculiarly  his  own  charge,  or  might  merely  ex- 
pose him  to  accidental  defilement.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  is  not  unlikely,  that  the  regulation  previously  pre- 
scribed,! had  proved,  upon  the  short  experiment,  so 
burdensome  as  to  have  occasioned  complaint ;  and  that, 
its  object  being  served  in  attracting  serious  attention 
to  the  subject,  it  now  admitted  of  being  relaxed,  without 
injury.  Accordingly,  provision  is  made  for  the  purifica- 
tion of  the  numbers,  who,  day  by  day,  in  such  a  mul- 
titude, must  have  been  defiled  by  the  occurrence  of 
some  death  near  them,  without  so  much  as  the  aid  of 
a  priest.  The  ashes  of  a  heifer,  immolated  without  the 
camp,  with  certain  carefully  specified  formalities,  are  di- 
rected to  be  thrown  into  water,  which  water  is  to  be  kept, 
in  order  to  be  sprinkled  by  any  "clean  person"  upon 
whatever  person  or  thing  has  been  defiled  by  the  pres- 
ence of  a  body,  of  part  of  a  body,  or  of  a  grave.     This 

for  perpetuity.  See  p.  242,  note  tt-  —  Verses  27,  30 ;  your  tribute  to  the 
priests,  paid  from  the  tribute  of  others,  shall  correspond  to  the  tribute, 
which  others,  from  their  own  threshing-floors  and  wine-presses,  pay  to 
you.  —  "  Pollute  "  (32) ;  make  common  by  withholding  from  the  due  sacred 
use,  that  of  contribution  to  the  priests. 

*  See  Ex.  xiii.  19.  t  Numb.  v.  1  -4. 


■^> 


364  NUMBERS   X.   11— XIX.  22.  [LECT. 

being  done  on  the  third,  and  again  on  the  seventh  day 
after  a  defilement,  it  was  then  considered  to  be  removed. 
It  is  reasonable  to  suppose,  that,  to  meet  the  numerous 
occasions,  which  must  have  been  constantly  arising  in 
remote  parts,  a  quantity  of  water,  thus  prepared,  was 
sent  into  the  different  quarters  of  the  encampment.* 
.  The  last  five  chapters,  on  which  we  have  remarked, 
are  without  a  date  in  the  text.  The  contents  of  the 
last  four  are  assigned,  by  a  note  in  the  margin  of  our 
English  Bibles,  to  a  period  half  way  between  the  Exo- 
dus and  the  invasion.  This,  however,  is  done  without 
authority  ;  nor,  though  it  is  true  we  cannot  disprove  the 
hypothesis,  is  there  any  probability  in  its  favor.  On  the 
contrary,  the  movement  to  which  the  sixteenth  and  sev- 
enteenth chapters  relate,  is  one  which  it  is  far  most  natu- 
ral to  refer  to  a  period  when  the  national  institutions  were 
recent ;  the  arrangement  prescribed  in  the  eighteenth, 
for  a  tribute  from  the  Levites  to  the  priests,  had  such  an 
important  relation  to  the  economy  of  the  ecclesiastical 
estate,  that  it  seems  impossible  not  to  ascribe  it  to  a 
very  early  time ;  f  and  the  inconvenience,  resulting  from 
a  preceding  law,  which  I  have  suggested  that  the  law  in 
the  nineteenth  chapter  was  designed  to  remove,  was 
so  oppressive,  as  to  create  a  strong  probability,  that  it 
was  not  permitted  to  remain  long  in  force.  On  the 
whole,  I  cannot  hesitate  to  understand,  that  the  actual 

*  It  may  safely  be  presumed  that  the  precise  directions  respecting 
the  "  red  heifer "  had  reference  to  some  existing  practices  and  opin- 
ions ;  but  it  is  in  vain  to  attempt  to  explain  all  the  particulars  of  the  ritual. 
A  quantity  of  learning,  collected  with  a  view  to  their  illustration,  and 
successfully,  as  to  some  parts,  may  be  seen  in  Spencer,  "De  Legibus" 
&c.,  lib.  2,  cap.  15. 

t  Verse  22  may  be  thought  to  furnish  a  confirmation  of  this  argument. 
"  Neither  must  the  children  of  Israel  henceforth  come  nigh  the  Tabernacle 
of  the  Congregation."  This  is  language,  which  it  is  not  natural  to  sup- 
pose was  iised  a  score  of  years  after  the  Levites  had  entered  on  their 
rharsre. 


aP 


XV.]  NUMBERS   X.   ll.^XIX.  22.  365 

series  of  events  is  pursued  by  Moses,  without  a  pause, 
from  the  place  which  records  his  entrance  on  his  mis- 
sion, to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  chapter  of  the  book 
before  us. 

And  I  suggest,  in  conclusion  of  this  part  of  the  his- 
tory, that  the  prominent  transactions,  which  it  relates, 
are  recorded  in  the  order  in  which  we  might  have 
supposed,  that,  under  such  an  administration,  they  would 
be  made  to  succeed  each  other.  First,  we  have  the 
dehverance  of  the  nation  from  its  bondage,  (in  other 
words,  the  creation  of  the  commonwealth,)  along  with 
the  institution  of  its  great  commemorative  rite,  the 
Passover.  The  people,  separated  and  made  one,  next 
receives  a  compendious  law  for  present  use,  compre- 
hending, however,  the  great  principles  of  ulterior  legis- 
lation. Then  elaborate  institutions  of  worship  are  pre- 
scribed, having  in  view  the  education  of  the  race  for 
their  great  function,  and  laws  are  given  in  fuller  detail, 
adapted  to  the  promotion  of  all  their  prosperity.  They 
are  now  an  organized  community,  ready,  in  every 
thing  except  national  character,  to  enter  on  their  high 
destiny.  But  this  is  wanting ;  and  till  it  shall  be  formed, 
they  are  doomed  to  remain  under  circumstances  where 
no  call  for  enterprise  will  exist,  and  where  their  ob- 
scurity will  be  their  protection. 


^5^ 


366  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  — XXVII.  23.  [  LECT. 


LECTURE    XVI. 

NUMBERS    XX.    1.  — XXVH.   23. 

Return  of  the  People  to  the   Southern   Border  of  Canaan. — 
Their  Condition  during  the  Interval  of  Thirty-Seven  Years. 

—  Reasons  of  the  Chasm  left  by  Moses  in  the  Record. — 
Scarcity,  and  Miraculous  Supply,  of  Water.  —  Negotiation 
with  the  Edomites  for  a  Passage    through   their   Country. 

—  Death  of  Aaron.  —  Skirmish  with  the  Southern  Canaan- 
iTEs.  —  Circuit  by  the  Red  Sea.  —  Plague  of  "Fiery  Ser- 
pents." —  Negotiation  with  the  Amorites,  and  Conquest  of 
THE  Territories  of  Sihon  and  Og.  —  Application  of  Balak, 
King   of  Moab,  to  Balaam,   and    his   Proceedings    thereupon. 

—  Disorders  and  Punishment  of  the  People  at  Shittim. — 
Census,  and  Arrangement  for  the  Division  of  Canaan.  —  Rule 
for  the  Inheritance  of  Property  in  Land.  —  Moses'  Vision 
of   Canaan,  and    Consecration   of   Joshua  as    his   Successor. 

More  than  thirty-seven  years  pass  without  a  record, 
and  we  find  the  Israelites  again  at  Kadesh  Barnea,  near 
the  southern  border  of  Canaan,  the  same  place  where 
their  fathers,  in  the  second  year  after  leaving  Egypt, 
had  desisted  from  the  project  of  an  immediate  invasion. 
What  had  been  their  condition  meanwhile  1  They  are 
probably  often  conceived  of,  as  having  been  roving  about 
in  a  compact  mass ;  without  employment,  or  object, 
except  that  of  detention  from  Canaan ;  and  miraculously 
supplied  with  all  their  food  through  the  whole  period, 
on  account  of  the  sterility  of  the  tract  which  they  were 
traversing.  Each  of  these  views  I  conceive  to  be  desti- 
tute of  proof,  and  in  violation  of  probability. 

The  latter  view  owes  its  currency  among  us  to  noth- 
ing more  than  the  manner  in  which  our  translators  have 
rendered  the  word,  used  to  denote  the  region  through 


XVI.]  NUMBERS  XX.   1.  — XXVII.  23.  367 

which  they  wandered.  This  was  by  no  means  a  "des- 
ert," or  "wilderness,"  in  our  sense  of  the  term;  but 
merely  a  tract  of  unclaimed  country,  and  destitute  in 
great  part  of  settled  habitations,  though  not  without 
numerous  posts,  villages,  and  cities,  of  which  the  names 
of  several,  that  lay  in  the  track  of  the  Israelites,  are 
actually  given.*  The  country  called  Arabia,  is  believed 
now  to  sustain  a  population  of  ten  or  twelve  millions.f 
It  is  in  many  parts  extremely  fertile,  producing  abun- 
dance of  wheat,  millet,  rice,  and  a  great  variety  of  vege- 
tables and  fruit,  much  of  the  latter  being  spontaneous ; 
and  the  peninsula  of  Mount  Sinai  and  the  region  about 
"El  Ghor,"  (the  great  valley  between  the  Dead  Sea 
and  the  Elanitic  gulf,)  in  and  near  which  the  wanderings 
of  the  Israelites  appear  in  great  part  to  have  been,  con- 
tain by  no  means  the  least  eligible  tracts  for  pasturage 
and  cultivation. 

These  tracts  have  actually  been  traversed,  age  after 
age,  and  continue  to  be  traversed  by  the  Bedouin  tribes, 
whose  manner  of  life  may  afford  us  a  vivid  representa- 
tion of  that  of  the  Israelites,  during  the  interval  between 
their  emancipation  and  their  establishment.  With  their 
herds  and  beasts  of  burden,  which  carry  their  little 
property,  these  unsetded  hordes  pass  from  place  to 
place,  as  they  are  tempted  by  the  prospect  of  water 
and  pasture ;  while  for  such  wants,  as  their  herds  and 
flocks,  with  the  tillage  which  they  practise  when  sta- 
tionary for  a  sufficient  time,  do  not  supply,  they  provide 
by  the  barter  of  horses  and  catde  with  the  inhabitants 
of  the  cities,  and  of  the  more  settled  regions,  which  occa- 
sionally they  visit.  The  previous  employments  of  the  Is- 
raelites prepared  them  to  adopt  this  manner  of  life.  They 
had  been  herdsmen  in  Goshen;  great  part  of  their  wealth, 

*  Numb,  xxxiii.  16-36,     Compare  Ps.  Ixv.  12. 

t  See  Malte-Brun's  "  Universal  Geographf ,"  book  30,  ad  calc. 


368^  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  — XXVII.  23.  [LECT. 

when  they  left  Egypt,  consisted  in  this  kind  of  property ; 
and  a  portion  of  them,  when  they  reached  Canaan, 
strenuously  urged  their  suit  to  be  permitted  to  occupy 
a  territory  suitable  for  keeping  up  their  former  habits.^ 

Again ;  I  suggested,  that  the  Israelites  are  perhaps 
commonly  conceived  of  as  all  dwelling,  while  upon  their 
wanderings,  in  a  compact  camp  ;  and  then  the  question 
naturally  presents  itself,  how  a  population,  half  as  large 
again  as  that  of  the  city  of  London,  could  live,  under 
such  circumstances,  through  so  many  years,  in  any  de- 
gree of  comfort,  even  if  the  truth  of  the  common  view 
should  be  granted,  that  a  daily  miraculous  provision  of 
food  was  made  for  them  in  the  form  of  manna,  which 
they  needed  to  be  at  no  further  pains  than  to  collect. 

I  will  not  reply  to  this  by  referring  to  the  immense 
numbers  represented  by  ancient  writers  to  have  moved 
together  in  military  expeditions ;  for  instance,  in  the  de- 
scent of  Xerxes  upon  the  Peloponnesus.f  I  find  no  rea- 
son for  supposing,  that  the  Israelites  were  subjected  to 
any  such  restraint,  as  would  have  been  necessary  to 
keep  them  all  collected  in  one  body.     I  presume  the 

»  Geh.  xlvL  31  -  34  ;  Ex.  x.  26 ;  xii.  38  ;  Numb.  xxxiL  —  For  the  fer- 
tility and  productions  of  Arabia,  see  Malte-Brun,  book  30,  particularly 
pp.  195,  196,  200  (Boston  Edit) ;  Niebuhr,  «  Travels  through  Arabia,"  &c. 
§  28,  chap.  1 ;  §  29,  chap.  2,  7,  8.  For  a  particular  description  of  the 
country  about  "  El  Ghor,"  and  near  Mount  Seir,  see  Burckhardt, 
"  Travels  in  Syria,  and  the  Holy  Land,"  p.  410  et  seq.  The  same 
writer  (p.  573  et  seq.)  speaks  of  the  fertility  of  the  valleys  of  Mount 
Sinai.  Niebuhr  (§  6,  chap.  9,  §  24)  treats  somewhat  fully  of  the  con- 
dition and  manners  of  the  Bedouin  tribes  of  the  present  day.  See 
also  Norden's  "Travels  in  Egypt  and  Nubia,"  Vol.  I.  pp.  11,  61. 

f  The  Greek  historians  make  Xerxes'  army,  with  its  attendants,  to  have 
amounted  to  more  than  five  millions.  Nor  is  it  to  the  purpose  to  say,  that 
this  was  probably  exaggeration.  Good  writers  may  exaggerate ;  but  exag- 
gerations evidently  absurd  are  a  kind  of  statement  which  the  laws  of  their 
art  do  not  admit ;  and  the  mention  of  such  a  host  of  Oriental  marauders, 
moving  in  one  body,  shows,  at  least,  that  to  them,  who  knew,  better  than 
we,  the  habits  of  the  time,  the  supposition  was  not  incredible.  See  Herod- 
otus, lib.  7,  cap.  51  et  seq.  ;|Diodorus  Siculus,  lib.  11  ad  init.  Compare 
Mitford's  "History  of  Greece,"  chap.  8,  §  1. 


XVI.]  NUMBERS  XX.   1.  — XXVII.  23.  369 

fact  to  have  been  (what  I  find  nothing  in  the  narrative 
to  discredit),  that,  while  the  Tabernacle,  wherever  it 
was  for  the  time  being,  was  the  centre  and  rendezvous 
of  the  nation,  all,  beyond  a  nunaber  of  warriors  suffi- 
cient to  secure  it  against  any  probable  assault,  were  per- 
mitted to  w^ander  away  at  will,  taking  care,  of  course, 
to  go  in  sufficient  numbers  to  prevent  their  return  from 
being  cut  off.  The  places  of  as  many,  as,  at  any  given 
time,  were  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Tabernacle, 
needed  to  be  determined  by  a  standing  rule ;  else  the 
tribes  would  have  been  liable  to  interfere  with  each 
other,  and,  if  collision  had  not  arisen,  still  the  order, 
which  was  on  all  accounts  desirable,  would  not  have 
been  preserved.  The  position  of  the  several  tribes,  in 
relation  to  one  another  and  to  the  Tabernacle,  was  ac- 
cordingly thus  fixed ;  and  whatever  portion  of  each 
tribe  was  required  to  remain,  or  chose  to  remain,  near 
the  central  point  of  the  nation,  was  obliged  to  occupy 
that  position.  But  it  does  not  therefore  follow,  that  the 
tribes  crowded  upon  the  Tabernacle,  and  consequently 
upon  each  other,  to  the  universal  inconvenience.  On 
the  contrary,  where  their  posts  are  first  designated,* 
we  are  told,  that  they  are  to  pitch  "  far  off  about  the 
Tabernacle";  just  as,  in  these  days,  the  different  di- 
visions of  a  large  army  are  so  disposed,  as  not  to  in- 
terfere with  each  other's  supplies.  Nor  do  we  read  of 
any  thing  to  impair  the  evidently  strong  probability,  that, 
while  each  tribe  had  its  post,  held  by  a  portion  of  its 
warriors,  a  large  part  of  its  number  was  at  any  given 
time  absent,  for  the  benefit  of  the  best  grazing-grounds 
they  might  find.  Even  while  in  Goshen,  it  appears 
that  they  had  wandered  thus,  extending  their  migrations 
as  far  as  the  confines  of  Palestine.!      How  far  they 

*  Numb.  ii.  2. 

f  1  Chron.  vii.  20-22.  —  That,  besides  gazing,  those  who  were  in 

VOL.  I.  47 


370  NUMBERS   XX.  1.— XXVII.  23.  [LECT. 

may  have  been  dispersed  in  such  expeditions,  during 
the  forty  years,  we  are  now  unable  to  say,  nor  can  we 
so  much  as  identify  many  of  the  places,  which  are  re- 
lated to  have  been  the  termini  of  their  several  stages. 
But  I  apprehend,  that  we  have  no  authority  for  suppos- 
ing them  to  have  been  confined  to  the  peninsula  bound- 
ed by  the  two  bays  of  the  Red  Sea  to  the  southeast 
and  southwest,  and  by  Canaan  and  the  Mediterranean 
to  the  north,  a  considerable  part  of  which  (the  northern 
portion)  is  a  barren  country.  It  is  true,  that  to  pene- 
trate into  the  eastern  and  southern  districts  of  Arabia, 
it  may  have  been  necessary  for  them  to  pass  through  a 
part  of  the  territory  of  Edom,  which  lay  about  Mount 
Seir,  and  the  Ghor,  south  of  the  Dead  Sea ;  and  that 
when  they  afterwards  solicited  permission  for  such  a 
passage,  it  was  denied.*  But  that  which  was  refused 
to  a  numerous  body,  in  warlike  array,  may  have  been 
willingly  permitted  to  separate  troops  of  harmless  herds- 
men ;  and  in  fact  we  find,  that,  notwithstanding  this  re- 
fusal, the  whole  host  did  subsequently  pass  to  the 
country  east  of  Edom  by  choosing  a  less  frequented 
route.f 

Another  question,  which  it  is  natural  to  ask,  is; 
Why  did  Moses  leave  no  record  of  transactions  of  the 
intermediate  years?  The  statement  of  this  question, 
in  the  first  place,  needs  to  be  modified.  Some  record 
he  has  left ;  for  instance,  the  minute  list  of  successive 
marches  in  the  thirty-third  chapter  of  this  book;  and 
the  substance  of  instructions  received  in  the  interval 
(if  my  view  be  correct),  which  are  brought  together  in 
the  book  of  Deuteronomy.     If  we  insist,  that  the  record 

immediate  attendance  upon  the  Tabernacle  sometimes  stopped  at  one 
place,  during  their  wanderings,  at  least  long  enough  to  raise  a  crop,  might 
be  argued  from  Numb.  ix.  22. 
*  Numb.  XX.  14-21.  t  xxi.  4. 


XVI.]  NUMBERS    XX.   1.  — XXVII.  23.  371 

should  have  been  continued,  in  the  same  circumstantial 
manner  in  which  it  had  been  begun,  it  is  because  we 
are  satisfied,  that  events  occurred,  durmg  the  thirty- 
eight  years  so  lightly  passed  over,  which  had  an  equal 
or  a  similar  claim  to  be  thus  narrated. 

These  events  must  have  been  either  1.  incidents  of 
a  natural,  or,  2.  of  a  supernatural  character,  or,  3.  the 
reception  of  new  laws. 

An  outline  of  one  class  of  occurrences,  of  the  first 
description,  is  actually  given  in  the  list  of  marches  just 
now  referred  to.  That  any  thing  else  took  place,  of 
material  importance,  demanding  a  special  record  to  be 
made  at  the  time,  or,  if  made,  to  be  preserved,  is  cer- 
tainly more  than  we  have  any  right  to  assume.  As 
far  as  we  may  judge  of  the  condition  of  the  people  in 
their  solitary  wanderings,  it  was  not  such  as  would  be 
likely  to  furnish  the  materials  of  a  copious  history. 

Of  new  supernatural  occurrences,*  we  have  no  au- 
thority for  presuming  that  there  were  any.  For  super- 
natural operations  to  produce  their  intended  effect  upon 
the  mind,  it  is  necessary  that  they  should  not  be  made 
common  and  familiar.  That  which  we  frequently  see, 
ceases  to  impress  us.  That  which  often  occurs,  what- 
ever else  be  its  character,  ceases  (if  I  may  be  pardoned 
the  truism)  to  be,  to  us,  out  of  the  course  of  nature. 
Miracles  had  been  wrought,  in  the  view  of  the  genera- 
tion, which  came  out  of  Egypt,  to  sanction  their  ac- 
ceptance of  the  national  Law.  The  race  which  had 
come  into  their  places,  was,  for  its  own  satisfaction,  to 
have  momentary  evidence  of  the  same  power  in  Moses.f 

*  I  say  "  of  ne?p  supernatural  occurrences";  because  whoever  supposes 
a  perpetual  miraculous  supply  of  manna,  and  guidance  of  the  column  of 
flame,  only  supposes  a  continuance  of  what  he  understands  to  have  been 
already  recorded  in  comprehensive  terms,  covering  the  whole  period  of 
the  march. 

t  E.  g.  Numb.  XX.  7-11. 


'kif 


372  NUMBKRS   XX.   1— XXVIl.  a:}.  [LECT. 

All  sound  reasoning  upon  the  objects  and  principles 
of  such  operations,  would,  I  think,  lead  us  to  suppose, 
that,  when  they  had  done,  in  the  first  two  years,  their 
special  temporary  work,  there  would,  in  the  interval  that 
followed,  be  a  suspension  of  them. 

But  it  may  be  further  said.  It  is  probable,  that  ad- 
ditions were  made  to  the  system  of  laws  in  this  inter- 
val. That  additional  laws  were,  during  the  time,  com- 
municated to  the  people,  is,  I  think,  not  strongly 
probable,  if  probable  at  all  Though  the  system  re- 
vealed in  Sinai  and  its  neighbourhood  was  not  complete 
(since  we  know  that  it  admitted  of  subsequent  addi- 
tions), yet  it  is  likely,  that  it  comprised  all  provisions 
which  it  was  best  should  be  promulgated  for  the  time 
being.  What  now  it  most  needed,  was,  to  be  made 
familiar,  which  it  would  be  by  regular  and  uniform  prac- 
tice upon  it,  and  would  not  be  while  it  continued  to  be 
subject  to  frequent  alterations.  The  national  institu- 
tions established,  and  the  relations  between  man  and 
man  defined,  permanency  was  now  the  thing  most  de- 
sirable. Additions  and  modifications,  though  in  due  time 
to  be  made,  would  be  most  advantageously  made,  not 
when  all  was  new,  and  when  change,  even  for  the  better, 
would  have  kept  the  people  in  an  unsettled  state,  but 
when  the  experience  of  a  generation  had  prepared  them 
to  understand,  what  it  was  that  required  to  be  added 
or  rectified.  That  additions  and  modifications  of  this 
kind,  introduced  to  our  knowledge  in  the  book  of 
Deuteronomy,  were  matter  of  revelation  to  Moses  in 
the  wilderness,  I  think  extremely  hkely.  That  any  of 
them  would  be  communicated  by  him  to  the  people, 
immediately  on  their  reception  by  himself,  is  what, 
under  the  circumstances  to  which  I  have  referred,  we 
should  have  no  right  to  expect.  That  a  record  was  not 
made  by  him,  of  each,  at  its  own  time,  is  certainly 


XVI.]  NUMBERS  XX.   1.— XXVII.  23.  373 

much  more  than  we  know.  And  if,  instead  of  be- 
queathing this  record,  if  it  were  made,  the  form,  in 
which  he  has  seen  fit  to  transmit  them  to  posterity,  is 
that  of  his  comprehensive  exposition  of  them  to  the 
people  on  the  eve  of  their  invasion  of  Canaan,  I  sub- 
mit with  confidence  the  question,  whether  this  was  not 
a  form  quite  as  natural  and  fit  for  him  to  adopt,  as  that 
which  the  alternative  proposes. 

Once  more ;  there  is  a  unity  in  Moses'  plan.  He 
writes  of  the  transition  of  the  Jews  from  the  condition 
of  a  horde  of  slaves  in  Egypt,  to  that  of  a  powerful 
nation,  about  to  become  free  proprietors  in  Canaan. 
The  subject  divides  itself  into  two  parts ;  the  emancipa- 
tion, and  the  preparation  for  conquest.  Both  of  these 
Moses  treats  at  large.  The  space  of  years,  which  he 
passes  over  in  silence,  is,  if  I  may  so  speak,  the  inter- 
lude between  the  two  acts  of  the  great  drama.* 

At  Kadesh,  where,  with  the  arrival  of  the  people  on 
the  first  month  of  the  fortieth  year  after  leaving  Egypt,t 
the  narrative  of  events  in  their  series  is  resumed,  occa- 
sion arises  for  the  performance  of  a  miracle,  not  only 
impressive  through  its  own  extraordinary  character,  but 
doubly  so  through  the  recollections  which  it  called  up 
in  the  minds  of  those,  who  in  their  youth  had  seen,  at 
Rephidim,  a  similar  divine  attestation  to  their  leader's 
authority,  and  through  the  tradition,  which  had  descend- 
ed to  such  as  were  not  old  enough  to  have  witnessed 

*  If  it  should  occur  to  any  one,  that  this  chasm  in  the  record  has  an 
unfavorable  bearing  on  its  authenticity,  I  will  only  ask,  whether,  the  cir- 
cumstances above  suggested  being  considered,  it  is  not  much  more  easy 
to  explain  how  it  should  have  been  left  by  Moses,  than  that  it  should  be 
left  by  any  later  writer,  who  had  nothing  to  do  but  to  fill  up  the  interval 
with  his  own  imaginations.  So  satisfied  am  I  of  this,  that  I  should  not 
hesitate  to  adduce  the  fact  as  a  subordinate  proof  of  the  Mosaic  origin  of 
the  narrative. 

t  Compare  Numb.  xx.  28 ;  xxxiii.  38. 


374  NUMBERS   XX.   1.  — XXVII.  23.  [LECT. 

that  act.  Distressed  by  want  of  water,  the  people  re- 
iterated their  accustomed  complaints,  upon  which  Moses 
was  commanded  to  "  take  the  rod,"  the  view  of  which 
would  recall  the  memory  of  earlier  miracles,  and  "  speak 
to  the  rock "  in  the  people's  presence.  "  And  Moses 
lifted  up  his  hand,  and  with  his  rod  he  smote  the  rock 
twice.  And  the  water  came  out  abundantly ;  and  the 
congregation  drank,  and  their  beasts  also."  On  account 
of  these  transactions,  so  closely  resembling  those  at 
Rephidim,  the  place  received  the  same  commemorative 
name.  It  was  called,  as  we  should  express  it,  "  a  sec- 
ond Meribah"  or  place  of  quarrel* 

Something  in  the  conduct  of  Moses  and  Aaron  on 
this  occasion  was  censurable  ;  and  they  are  consequent- 
ly told,  that  they  must  not  hope  to  survive  to  see  the 


*  Numb.  XX.  1-13.  —  "The  whole  con^egation"  (1,  also  22).  Was 
not  this  expression  intended  to  distinguish  between  the  host,  now  col- 
lected, for  the  invasion,  at  one  rendezvous,  and  the  scattered  parties,  who 
had  hitherto  roamed  the  wilderness  ?  —  "  Kadesh"  (1) ;  called  "  Meribah- 
Kadesh  "  (xxvii.  14 ;  Deut.  xxxii.  51)  to  distinguish  it  from  the  other  Meribah 
(Ex.xvii.l).  —  "The  desert  of  Zin,"  (jy^^  on  the  southern  border  of  Canaan, 
is  a  very  different  place  from  that  of  "  Sin "  (j'p,  Ex.  xvi.  1),  the  latter 
being  a  short  distance  to  the  northwest  of  Sinai.  — "  Miriam  died  there 
and  was  buried  there."  I  am  very  suspicious  of  the  authenticity  of  these 
words.  The  fact  is  related  nowhere  else ;  (compare  Deut.  xxxii.  50 ; 
also  Numb,  xxxiii.  36,  with  37-39;)  they  break  the  continuity  of  the 
narrative ;  and  I  find  it  difficult  to  realize,  that  Moses  should  dispose  so 
summarily  of  the  death  of  a  person  so  intimately  connected  with  himself, 
and  on  all  accounts  so  considerable  {compare  23-29).  If  a  tradition  to 
that  effect  existed,  it  would  easily  gain  insertion,  first,  in  a  marginal  gloss, 
and  so,  subsequently,  in  the  text.  If  the  words  are  authentic,  I  have  little 
hesitation  in  regarding  them  as  retrospective  in  their  sense ;  "  Miriam 
had  died,  and  been  buried  there,"  that  is,  when,  nearly  forty  years  before, 
the  march  had  been  arrested  there  "  many  days."  (Compare  Deut  i.  46.) 
On  this  interpretation.  Moses,  returning  after  so  long  an  interval,  to  the 
spot  of  his  sister's  burial,  naturally  refers  in  a  word  to' that  event,  though 
he  does  not  enlarge  upon  it,  as  he  would  have  done,  had  he  written  while 
it  was  still  recent  A  reason  for  my  dwelling  on  this  remark  will  appear, 
when  I  come  to  treat  of  Deut  xxxiv.  7.  —  "Take  the  rod"  (8);  the  rod 
so  well  known  of  old ;  compare  Ex.  iv.  3  ;  xiv.  16 ;  xvii.  5, 11. 


XVI.]  NUMBERS  AX.   1.  — XXVII.  23.  375 

establishment  of  the  people  in  their  promised  home. 
What  the  fault  was,  does  not  distinctly  appear.  It  has 
been  differently  understood  to  consist  in  their  impa- 
tience, indicated  by  Moses*  striking  the  rock,  when  he 
had  only  been  bidden  to  speak  to  it,  or  by  his  striking 
it  "  twice,"  instead  of  once,  as  at  Rephidim,  or  in  their 
apparent  arrogating  to  themselves  of  power  to  do  the 
marvel,  when  they  said,  "  Hear  now,  ye  rebels ;  must 
we  fetch  you  water  out  of  this  rock,"  when  they  should 
have  been  careful  to  "  sanctify "  the  Lord,  as  the  con- 
text expresses  it,  by  ascribing  the  work  to  him.  I  sup- 
pose that  we  are  not  so  much  to  look  for  their  offence 
in  either  of  these  particulars,  as  in, that  general  air  of 
impatience  and  petulance,  and  want  of  a  calm  dignity 
and  placid  confidence  in  God,  (befitting  their  office  and 
their  situation,)  which  betrayed  itself  in  the  acts  and 
language  referred  to,  and  very  probably  in  other  parts 
of  their  conduct  which  are  not  recorded.* 

And  I  conceive  it  to  be  an  unsatisfactory  way  of  view- 
ing the  subject,  to  regard  them  as  having,  on  this  occa- 
sion, committed  a  sin,  which,  after  all  their  services, 
required,  as  an  ultimate  object,  a  punishment  so  heavy 
as  that  of  their  exclusion  from  a  personal  share  in  the 
great  result  of  their  anxieties  and  toils.  The  probable 
truth  seems  to  me  to  have  been,  that,  under  the  infirmi- 
ties of  very  advanced  age,  they  had  sustained  in  some 
degree  the  loss  of  that  equanimity  of  temper,  which  the 
momentous  approaching  crisis  required  in  the  nation's 
leaders.  Their  time  of  greatest  efficiency,  at  least  for 
the  needs  of  such  an  occasion  as  was  coming,  had  now 

*  See  also  Numb.  xx.  6.  Compare  Ps.  cvi.  33.  "  Ye  believed  me  not" 
(12).  Some  of  the  Jewish  commentators  understand,  that  Moses,  re- 
membering that  he  had  done  a  like  act  nearly  forty  years  before,  despond- 
ingly  concluded  that  there  was  to  be  another  as  long  delay  ;  and  that  this 
was  the  offensive  want  of  faith,  which  broke  out,  through  his  irritation,  in 
hasty  acts  and  language. 


376  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  — XXVII.  523.  [LECT. 

gone  by.  The  common  good  demanded,  that  their  high 
trusts  should  be  transferred  to  the  hands  of  such,  as, 
along  with  sufficient  experience,  had  more  of  the  self- 
possessed  and  uniform  energy  of  more  vigorous  years. 
But  still,  for  this  to  be  done,  without  any  specific  act  of 
theirs  justifying  the  measure,  would  have  seemed  se- 
vere, and  left  them  room  for  dissatisfaction  and  com- 
plaint. An  occasion  had  now  arisen,  making  it  fit  and 
seasonable  that  that  decree  should  go  forth.  After  be- 
traying their  infirmity,  under  such  public  circumstances, 
in  the  people's  view,  they  could  no  longer  pretend  that 
it  had  not  come  upon  them,  to  the  degree  of  lessening 
their  fitness  for  the  high  responsibility  they  might  other- 
wise have  desired  to  retain.  Being  now  self-convicted 
of  that  infirmity,  their  sense  of  right,  and  their  public 
spirit,  would  reconcile  them  to  the  relinquishment  of 
trusts,  which,  lof  course,  they  would  prefer  only  to  resign 
with  life ;  nor  do  we  read  that  they  ventured  any  re- 
monstrance against  the  sentence.  In  their  exclusion 
from  Canaan,  as  in  that  of  the  whole  people  a  genera- 
tion earlier,  we  are  to  recognise  the  consequence,  not 
simply  of  a  single  act,  but  of  a  state  of  mind,  which 
that  act  made  manifest. 

Another  view,  naturally  connectmg  itself  with  this, 
may  be  briefly  suggested.  The  time  had  come,  w^hen 
it  was  best  for  the  people,  educated  for  freedom,  energy, 
and  conquest,  to  be  made  to  know,  that  henceforward 
they  must  rely  on  themselves,  and  not  on  supernatural 
interpositions  of  their  Divine  guide.  This  they  could 
hardly  be  brought  to  feel,  as  long  as  the  instruments 
of  those  interpositions  in  time  past  continued  with 
them;  and  therefore  it  was  fit  that  Moses. and  Aaron 
should  be  withdrawn.  They,  however,  might  have  felt 
that  they  were  harshly  treated,  in  not  bfeing  permitted 
to  witness  the  consummation  of  their  cares ;  and  to  any 


XVI.]  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  — XXVII.  23.  377 

assertion  of  theirs,  that  irreproachable  conduct  in  the 
trusts  which  they  had  sustained  gave  a  just  title  to 
such  indulgence,  the  suitable  reply  was,  that,  even  on 
that  ground,  the  indulgence  had  not  been  earned  by 
them,  as  their  conduct,  if  meritorious,  had  not  been  free 
from  reproach. 

Whether  it  was,  that  the  southern  border  of  Canaan 
presented  peculiar  obstacles  to  an  invasion,  from  the 
character  of  its  inhabitants,  or  the  face  of  the  country, 
or  that  the  remembrance  of  the  former  unsuccessful 
attempt  would  have  had  a  dispiriting  effect,  or  for  some 
other  cause  unexplained,  the  course  now  proposed  is, 
to  make  the  inroad  from  the  east,  above  the  head  of  the 
Dead  Sea.  To  this  end,  Moses  sends  to  solicit  an 
unobstructed  passage  by  the  great  road,  which  lay 
through  the  northern  district  of  the  Edomites,  or  Idu- 
maeans,  descendants  of  Jacob's  elder  brother,  Esau.  It 
is  refused,  and  he  directs  the  march  southward,  along 
the  western  boundary  of  Edom,  with  the  purpose  of 
passing  to  the  east  through  the  less  populous  region, 
which  bordered  upon  the  Elanitic  gulf.  On  its  way, 
the  host  arrives  at  Mount  Hor,  where  Moses  with 
Eleazar  is  directed  to  attend,  in  a  retirement  of  that 
hilly  region,  on  the  last  hours  of  the  high-priest,  and  to 
transfer  the  insignia  of  Aaron's  high  office,  to  his  son.* 

*  Numb.  XX.  14-28.  —  "Thy  brother  Israel"  (14);  compare  Gen.  xxv. 
30.  — "  Strip  Aaron  of  his  garments,  and  put  them  upon  Eleazar  his  son  " 
(26);  that  is,  invest  Eleazar  with  the  attributes  of  his  father's  office. 
The  words  need  not  to  be  literally  taken.  We  should  not  hesitate  to  say, 
that  a  son  succeeded  to  his  father's  crown,  even  though,  strictly  speaking, 
no  crown  had  ever  been  on  the  head  of  either.  —  '•  They  went  up  into 

Mount  Hor and  Aaron  died  there  "  (27,  28).     Tradition  indicates 

his  tomb  near  the  ancient,  and  recently  re-discovered,  city  of  Petra,  thus 
agreeing  with  an  opinion  at  least  as  old  as  the  time  of  Josephus.  (Ant. 
lib.  4,  cap.  4,  §  7.)  Burckhardt  visited  the  spot  in  1812  ("  Travels"  &c., 
p.  430).  and  it  hal  since  been  more  fully  explored  by  several  travellers, 
our  enterprising  countryman,  Mr.  Stevens,  among  the  number.  ("  Inci- 
dents of  Travel"  &c.,  Vol.  II.  pp.  95-98.) 

VOL.  I.  48 


if 


378  NUiMBERS   XX.   1.  — XXVII.  2:3.  [LECT. 

Having  devoted  thirty  days  to  ceremonies  of  mourn- 
ing, and  suffered  some  loss  in  a  skirmish  with  a  party  of 
the  southern  Canaanites,*  the  people  pursued  the  course 
which  had  been  marked  out,  and,  passing  by  the  head 
of  the  gulf,  gained  the  unoccupied  country  to  the  east 
of  Idum£Ea.  Here  they  were  annoyed  by  venomous 
serpents,  and  Moses,  interceding  for  the  cure  of  those 
who  had  been  stung,  was  ordered  to  erect  a  brazen 
image  of  the  reptile,  and  give  notice,  that  whoever 
looked  upon  it,  should  be  cured.f  A  few  more  stages 
towards  the  north,  brought  them  to  the  territory  of  the 
Amorites,  through  which,  as  before  through  that  of 
Idumaea,  they  sent  to  ask  free  passage,  w'ith  the  prom- 
ise of  giving  no  disturbance,  and  touching  no  property, 
as  they  passed  to  their  destination  in  the  country  west 
of  the  Jordan.  Sihon,  king  of  the  Amorites,  not  only  de- 
nied their  request,  but  "  went  out  against  Israel  into  the 
wilderness,"   and,  without  provocation,  assaulted   them 

•  Numb.  xxi.  1-3.  —  "By  the  way  of  the  spies ^^  (1).  There  is  no  au- 
Uiority  for  this  rendering.  The  Septuagint,  and  after  it  the  Arabic, 
understand  a  proper  name  to  be  intended,  and  translate  "  by  the  way  of 
Atharim." — "And  he  called  the  name  of  the  place,  Hormah"  (3);  nD"^n  ; 
a  word  having  reference  to  the  D'^n  ,  or  doom  to  which  they  had  devoted  it 
(2).  With  some  English  commentators,  I  decidedly  incline  to  regard  all 
of  this  verse,  except  the  last  clause,  as  the  gloss  of  a  later  time,  indicat- 
ing the  subsequent  execution  of  the  doom,  here  threatened,  by  Joshua,  and 
the  tribes  of  Judah  and  Simeon,  as  recorded  in  .Toshua  xii.  7,  14  ;  Judges 
i,  17.  The  words  "  unto  Hormah  "  appear  to  have  been  inserted  in  Numb, 
xiv.  45,  subsequently  to  the  giving  of  that  name  under  the  circumstances 
here  related. 

f  Numb.  xxi.  4-9.  Burckhardt  (p.  499)  and  Laborde  ("  Journey 
through  Arabia  Petrsea  "  &c.,  p.  138,  London  Edit)  found  abundance  of 
serpents  in  this  region.  "  Fiery  serpents  " ;  serpents  with  an  inflamma- 
tory bite.  That  they  were  a  supernatural  judgment  upon  the  Israelites 
is  not  said,  either  in  the  text  before  us,  or  in  the  parallel  passage  in  Deu- 
teronomy (viii.  15).  "The  Lord  sent  fiery  serpents  "  (6)  as  he  sends  every 
thing;  and  by  a  natural  tendency  of  the  mind,  when  trouble  was  experi- 
enced, and  there  was  at  the  same  time  a  consciousness  of  being  faulty, 
the  calamity  was  viewed  (7)  as  a  punitive  providential  infliction.  The 
fitness  of  the  arrangement  for  the  cure  is  to  be  vindicated  upon  the 
principles  exhibited  at  p.  159,  which  see. 


XVI.]  NUMBERS   XX,  1.  — XXVII.  23.  379 

there.  Victory  declared  for  the  Israelites,  and  they 
took  possession  of  Sihon's  country  by  the  right  of  con- 
quest. Proceeding  on  their  way,  an  attack,  equally  un- 
provoked, as  appears,  was  made  upon  them  by  Og, 
king  of  Bashan,  the  region  adjoining  Moab  on  the 
north.  "He  w^ent  out  against  them,  he  and  all  his 
people,  to  the  battle,  at  Edrei."  It  was  attended  by  a 
similar  result,  and  the  victors  occupied  his  country  also.* 
The  alarm,  occasioned  by  these  conquests,  extended 

*  Numb.  xxi.  10-35. — In  14,  15  (compare  13),  there  can  be  little 
doubt  (though  the  passage  is  obscure,  and  has  not  improbably  been  cor- 
rupted), that  Moses  is  quoting  some  history  or  poem  of  the  Amorites,  to 
the  end  of  determining  the  extent  of  the  country,  of  which,  by  his  victory 
over  them,  he  had  become  master.  He  adduces  the  lines  to  show,  that 
this  people,  in  their  wars  with  the  Moabites,  had  pushed  their  southern 
boundary  as  far  as  the  river  Arnon  (compare  24,  26);  and  accordingly,  as 
far  as  this,  the  Israelites  might  now  maintain  a  claim  against  the  people 
of  Moab,  whom  they  did  not  propose  to  disturb  in  their  own  possessions. 
(Compare  Deut  ii.  9.)  If  this  view  be  correct,  and  if  (which  has  been 
doubted)  the  word  nin.'  (14)  is  genuine,  and  rightly  pointed,  the  title, 
"the  book  of  the  wars  of  the  Lord,"  used  in  quoting  a  record  of  idolaters, 
must  be  understood  as  equivalent  to  "  the  book  of  the  great  wars."  Such 
forms,  for  a  superlative,  belong  to  the  Hebrew  idiom ;  compare  Gen.  x.  9 ; 
XXX.  8;  XXXV.  5;  Jonah  iii.  3;  Luke  i.  6 ;  Acts  vii.  20.  — "  What  he  did" 
(14).  Who  is  here  intended  we  cannot  say,  because  of  the  abrupt  be- 
ginning, so  common  in  quotations.  The  clause,  further,  is  altogether 
obscure;  the  verb  (ZT)])  being  not  only  not  found  elsewhere,  but  being 
of  a  formation  not  agreeable  to  Hebrew  analogy.  —  In  verses  17,  18,  we 
appear  to  have  the  few  first  lines  of  a  hymn,  composed  and  sung  on  the 
joyful  occasion  of  finding  an  easy  and  abundant  supply  of  water  near  the 
nation's  future  home.  —  "And  Israel  sent  messengers"  &c.  (21).  They 
had  before  entered  an  unfrequented  part  of  the  country  claimed  by  Sihon 
(13,  20),  but  had  not,  till  now,  approached  its  settlements.  —  "  Come  unto 
Heshbon"  &c.  (27-30).  Here  again,  (as  in  14,  15,)  some  language 
current  among  the  Amorites,  in  the  form  of  ode  or  ballad,  (not  of  "prov- 
erbs,") is  quoted,  to  the  end  of  showing  that  Heshbon,  having  been  pre- 
viously taken  from  the  Moabites  by  Sihon,  passed,  with  his  defeat,  into  the 
hands  of  the  Israelites,  his  conquerors.  —  "  There  was  none  lejl  him  [Og] 
alive '  (35).  Not  that  all  his  subjects  were  put  to  death  ;  but  that  none 
of  them  remained  living  about  their  homes.  They  were  treated  like  the 
subjects  of  Sihon  (34);  and  these  were  not  all  slaughtered,  but  ex- 
pelled (32). 


f: 


380  NUMBERS  XX.   1.  — XXVII.  23.  [LECT. 

among  the  neighbouring  tribes ;  and  Balak,  king  of  Moab, 
proceeded  to  take  measures,  prompted  by  the  supersti- 
tion of  the  time,  for  securing  himself  against  the  ex- 
pected inroad.  In  the  region,  further  east,  towards  or 
beyond  the  Euphrates,*  Hved  a  person,  named  Balaam, 
to  whom  the  popular  belief  ascribed  the  mysterious  art 
of  propitiating  the  powers  of  Heaven,  and  bending  their 
will  to  his  purposes.  To  him  Balak  sent  a  commission 
of  some  of  his  chief  men,  associating  with  them  some 
of  the  elders  of  Midian  (with  which  people  it  would 
appear  from  the  sequel,  that  Moab  was  in  alliance),  to 
bribe  him,  with  the  promise  of  great  gifts  and  honors, 
tp  come  and  lay  the  invaders  under  that  ban,  which  it 
was  believed  would  paralyze  all  their  dreaded  strength.! 
Balaam,  having  a  character  for  supernatural  wisdom  to 
maintain,  of  course  took  care  to  inform  himself  of  facts, 
by  which  he  could  judge  what  oracles  to  utter,  with 
a  probability  that  the  event  would  fulfil  them.  Not  to 
say,  that  tidings  of  the  force  and  the  impetuosity  of  the 
strange  people,  which  had  issued  from  the  desert,  would 
be  Ukely  to  reach  him  in  his  not  distant  home,  a  report 
of  the  subjugation  of  the  Amorites,  and  of  Bashan, 
could  hardly  have  failed  to  go  abroad,  and  the  very 
message  of  Balak  was  hint  enough  to  the  watchful 
and  practised  sagacity  which  his  profession  demanded. 
When  he  had  learned  from  those  who  bore  it,  how  great 

•  Balaam  is  said  (Deut.  xxiii.  4),  to  have  been  "  of  Mesopotamia." 
Instead  of  "the  land  of  the  children  of  his  people,''^  (l":3Jl,  Numb.xxii.  5,) 
which  is  indefinite,  the  Samaritan,  Syriac,  and  Vulgate  give  a  reading  cor- 
responding to  "the  land  of  the  children  of  Amnion."  (jis;?.)  The  territories 
of  Ammon  and  Midian  lay  to  the  east  of  those  of  the  Moabites  and  Amor- 
ites ;  and  it  is  likely,  that  between  the  two  former  respectively,  as  well  as 
between  them  and  Mesopotamia,  still  further  east,  the  boundaries  were 
not  strictly  defined. 

\  Besides  the  direct  effect,  upon  the  Israelites,  of  this  imprecation, 
Sihon  naturally  relied  upon  it  to  revive  the  courage  of  his  own  army. 


XVI.]  NUMBERS   XX.   1.  — XXVII.  23.  381 

was  the  panic  which  prevailed,  he  already  perceived 
what  the  event  of  any  contest  was  likely  to  be,  and 
possessed  the  information  needful  for  keeping  up  his 
reputation  as  a  prophet. 

He  understood  his  art,  however,  too  well  to  dismiss 
the  messengers  at  once  with  the  declaration  that  he 
could  do  nothing  for  their  master.  It  belonged  to  the 
proprieties  of  his  assumed  character,  to  entertain  their 
suit ;  besides,  they  had  come  "  with  the  rewards  of 
divination  in  their  hand,"  and  it  was  his  obvious  policy 
to  protract  the  negotiation,  and,  by  stimulating  their 
anxiety  while  he  kept  them  in  suspense,  to  extort  the 
highest  possible  recompense  for  his  good  offices.  Ac- 
cordingly, he  bids  them  remain  by  him  over  night, 
until  he  shall  consult  Jehovah,  the  patron  Deity  of  the 
formidable  strangers,  with  whom  he  professes  himself 
to  be  in  communication.  In  the  morning  he  informs 
them  that  he  had  obtained  an  answer,  probably  in  a 
dream,  but  that  it  was  unfavorable ;  Jehovah  would  not 
consent  that  he  should  comply  with  Balak's  wish.* 

*  Numb.  xxiL  1-13.  — "The  plains  of  Modb'"  (1);  the  district,  to 
which  the  Israelites  had  advanced,  and  into  which  Balak,  moving'  among 
the  hills,  had  followed  them,  retained  its  ancient  name,  as  is  common, 
though  it  had  passed  into  the  possession  of  the  Amorites.  —  The  sub- 
stance of  verses  3-6,  reported  to  Balaam  by  the  messengers,  was  enough 
to  indicate  to  him,  in  the  first  instance,  the  panic  which  made  the  Moab- 
ites  incapable  of  a  successful  defence.  —  "I  will  bring  you  word  again, 
as  Jehovah  shall  speak  unto  me  "  (8).  Upon  this  statement,  of  Balaam's 
speaking  of  "  Jehovah,"  Le  Clerc  ("  Commentarius  "  ad  loc.)  remarks ; 
"  Forte  Moses  eum,  more  Hebraico,  inducit  loquentem,  quamvis  non  hac, 
sed  synonyma  quapiam  voce,  usus  sit."  I  agree  to  the  soundness  of  the 
principle  of  interpretation  herein  implied,  which  is  developed  in  Le  Clerc's 
"  Ars  Critica  "  (Vol.  I.  p.  277  et  seq.) ;  but  I  think  that,  to  apply  it  here,  is 
to  lose  sight  of  the  spirit  of  the  passage.  If  Balaam  was  an  Ammonite, 
agreeably  to  a  view  in  the  last  note  but  one,  he  had  an  hereditary  knowl- 
edge that  the  Hebrew  divinity  was  called  Jehovah,  for  the  Ammonites  were 
descended  from  Lot  (Gen.  xix.  36-38).  At  all  events,  he  lived  near  to  that 
race.  Nor  is  it  at  all  necessary  even  to  devise  a  way  for  his  becoming 
acquainted  with  a  fact,  so  notorious,  that  whoever  had  heMd  any  thing  of 


/ 


* 


382  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  —  XXVII.  23.  [LECT. 

The  messengers  returned  with  the  report  of  their 
unsuccessful  application,  and  (as  Balaam  naturally  ex- 
pected) were  succeeded  by  a  more  numerous  and  digni- 
fied embassy,  to  urge  with  yet  more  liberal  promises 
his  interposition  in  behalf  of  the  more  alarmed  king. 
Continuing  the  same  artifice  as  heretofore,  (though  he 
well  knew,  that,  as  circumstances  were,  the  success 
of  the  Israelites  could  hardly  be  doubted,  and  that, 
accordingly,  to  curse  them  would  be  to  forfeit  for  the 
future  all  his  character  as  a  true  soothsayer,)  he  told 
the  new  envoys  that  no  prospect  of  advantage  would 
induce  him,  in  a  matter  regarding  the  Israelites,  to  go 
contrary  to  Jehovah's  word,  but  that,  if  they  would  re- 
main near  him  till  the  next  morning,  he  would  make 
another  attempt  to  effect  their  purpose,  in  the  only  way 
within  his  province.  In  the  morning,  accordingly,  he 
informs  them,  that  he  had  prevailed  so  far  as  to  obtain 
leave  to  go  with  them  to  their  monarch's  encampment, 
and  await  further  communications  on  the  spot ;  and  he 
relates  to  them  (if  I  understand  the  passage  correctly) 
the  incidents  of  a  dream,  in  which  this  consent  on  Je- 
hovah's part  had  been  conveyed.  Nothing  could  be 
better  devised  than  this  measure,  to  carry  on  the  im- 
posture, and  secure  the  utmost  profit  from  it.  By 
appearing  to  act  so  cautiously  and  submissively,  he 
secured  confidence ;  and,  by  repairing  to  the  spot,  he 
placed  himself  in  a  position  (without  exciting  any  sus- 
picion  that  such  was  his  design)   to  make   his  own 

the  Israelites,  must  be  supposed  to  have  learned  it.  —  Verse  9  contains  a 
question  altogether  suitable  for  Balaam,  narrating  a  fictitious  interview,  to 
put  into  the  mouth  of  Jehovah,  but  admitting  no  interpretation  consistent 
with  the  common  view.  — Verse  11  implies  no  representation  on  Balaam's 
part,  that  the  Israelitish  God  was  ignorant  of  what  his  people  had  done. 
He  merely  tells  the  messengers,  that,  at  the  pretended  interview,  he  had 
apprized  Jehovah  of  the  fact  of  their  arrival,  and  of  the  message  which 
they  brought. 


XVI.]  NUMBERS   XX.   1.  — XXVII.  23.  383 

observations  on  the  existing  state  of  things,  so  as  to 
avoid  being  at  fault,  when  he  should  come  to  utter  his 
final  predictions.* 

Arrived  at  Balak's  camp,  he  is  received  with  great 

*  Numb.  xxii.  14  -  35.  —  «  The  word  of  Jehovah,  my  God''  ( 18).  This 
is  an  expression,  which  has  cost  much  pains  to  the  commentators,  and 
much  error  to  their  followers.  The  spirit  of  the  transaction,  as  above 
described,  being  regarded,  the  expression  will  appear  altogether  fit  and 
natural.  Jehovah  was  Balaam's  god,  pro  hac  vice,  as  being  the  god,  with 
whom,  as  proper  guardian  of  the  Israelites,  he  professed  to  be  treating. 
Jehovah  was  "  his  god,"  quasi  his  familiar.  To  get  light  on  the  expres- 
sion, see  not  the  Rabbins,  nor  their  Christian  disciples,  but  Shakspeare, 
who,  always  true  to  the  proprieties  of  a  scene  and  character,  makes 
Prospero  say,  "  my  dainty  Ariel  " ;  "  my  brave  spirit " ;  "  my  tricksy  spirit " ; 
"  m^/ diligence."  —  "If  the  men  come"  &c.  (20);  rather,  since  the  men 
have  come  &c. 

I  have  represented  the  transaction  recorded  in  verses  21 -.35  (the  last 
clause  of  35  excepted), as  Balaam's  account  of  a  dream,  in  which  he  pre- 
tended to  have  received  Jehovah's  consent  to  his  repairing  to  the  camp  of 
Balak,  with  his  messengers,  its  whole  machinery  being  contrived  to  illus- 
trate his  desire  to  overcome  every  obstacle,  so  as  to  gratify  their  master. 
Let  the  reader  compare  verse  20  with  21-35,  and  I  think  he  will  see 
reason  to  allow,  that  Balaam,  having  in  the  first  place  told  the  messengers, 
who  had  remained  with  him,  that  he  had  received  a  communication  during 
the  night,  and  what  its  substance  was  (20),  then  proceeds  to  tell  them  in 
detail  (21-35),  in  what  form  the  communication  came,  viz.  that  of  a  dream, 
in  which,  after  persisting,  in  the  face  of  extraordinary  discouragements, 
in  the  attempt  to  visit  Balak  out  of  his  good-will  to  that  prince,  he  heard 
himself  addressed  by  Jehovah's  angel,  who  saw  how  determined  he  was, 
with  permission  to  prosecute  his  journey.  The  identity  of  substance 
between  verses  20  and  35,  demands  particular  observation ;  in  20,  as  I 
have  remarked,  the  communication  alleged  to  have  been  received,  being 
given  alone,  while  it  is  repeated  in  35,  as  the  last  of  the  incidents  which 
made  the  form  and  manner  of  its  conveyance.  The  relation  between  the 
two  passages  is  the  same  which  I  have  represented  above  as  subsisting 
between  Numb.  xi.  1-3,  and  4-35.  Compare  also  Gen.  xxxvii.  21  with 
22;  John  xxi.  1  with  2-23.  And  thus  the  inconsistency  is  done  away, 
(fatal,  as  it  seems  to  me,  to  the  common  hypothesis,  to  say  nothing  of 
other  insuperable  difficulties  attending  it.)  between  the  permission  first 
given  for  the  journey  (20),  and  the  impediments  afterwards  supposed  to  be 
thrown  in  its  way  (22  et  seq.) 

But  I  shall  be  required  to  point  to  something  in  the  narrative,  showing 
that  what  I  call  a  dream  was  designed  to  be  represented  as  such.  I 
reply,  that  all  writing  supposes  some  exercise  of  discernment  on  the  part 
of  the  reader,  and  some  capacity  of  inferring,  from  significant  circumstan- 


384  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  — XXVII.  23.  [LECT. 

distinction  by  the  monarch,  to  whom  (reserving  himself 
for  future  action)  he  merely  repeats  the  declaration, 
that  he  has  come  to  exercise  no  will  of  his  own,  —  that 
he  is  to  receive  an  oracle,  not  to  dictate  one ;  a  decla- 
ration rendered  necessary  by  the  circumstances,  since, 
by  declaring,  on  the  one  hand,  that  the  case  was  des- 
perate, he  would  have  forfeited  his  prospect  of  reward, 
and,  on  the  other,  by  uttering  a  favorable  prediction 
which  the  event  should  not  confirm,  he  would  have  lost 
the  reputadon  from  which  he  derived  his  gains.     On 

ces,  what  is  not  distinctly  announced.  Such  circumstances  I  have  en- 
deavoured to  show  that  there  are  in  this  context  It  is  an  obvious  artifice 
of  rhetoric  to  slide  into  the  relation  of  a  dream,  from  a  narrative  of  real 
incidents,  in  such  a  manner  as  to  require  the  reader  to  infer  a  transition, 
from  the  altered  character  of  the  occurrences  described.  I  am  speaking 
of  an  acknowledged  law  of  composition.  Let  thfe  following  lines  from 
one  of  Scott's  poems  Ulustrate  it,  though  of  course,  we  should  expect 
to  find  even  bolder  devices  of  writing  in  use  among  ancients  and  Ori- 
entals, than  in  our  tamer  western  and  modern  world. 

"  The  short,  dark  waves,  heaved  to  the  land, 

With  ceaseless  plash  kissed  cliff'  or  sand. 

It  was  a  slumb'rous  sound  5  —  he  turned 

To  tales  at  which  his  youth  had  burned. 

Of  the  wild  witch's  baneful  cot, 

And  mermaid's  alabaster  grot. 

Who  bathes  her  limbs  in  sunless  well. 

Deep  in  Stratheiird's  enchanted  cell. 

Thither  in  fancy  wrapt  he  flies. 

And  on  his  sight  the  vaults  arise. 

That  hut's  dark  walls  he  sees  no  more, 

His  foot  is  on  the  marble  Jioor, 

And  o'er  his  head  the  dazzling  spars 

Gleam  like  a  firmament  of  stars." 

Lord  of  the  Isles,  Canto  in. 
Who  doubts,  when  he  has  read  thus  far  with  attention,  that  there  has  been 
a  transition  to  a  dream.'  Yet  he  has  not  been  told  it;  it  is  merely  his 
inference  from  the  character  of  the  description.  The  words  "  thither  in 
fancy  wrapt  he  flies,"  are  no  intimation  of  a  dream ;  they  describe  the 
previous  state  of  Avakeful  musing.  And  though,  for  the  convenience  of 
the  rhyme,  and  of  the  further  narration,  the  reader  is  presently  after  told 
■  "  with  Allan's  dream 

Mingled  the  captive's  warning  scream," 

it  is  the  fault  of  his  own  dulness,  if  he  is  not  fully  in  possession  of  the 
meaning,  before  he  has  proceeded  thus  far. 


XVI.]  NUMBERS  XX.   1 — XXVII.   23.  386 

the  morrow,  choosing  a  spot  among  the  hills,  where  he 
could  have  the  Israelitish  camp  below,  full  in  view,  and 
be  able  to  observe  it  with  a  leisurely  survey,  he  has 
seven  altars  erected  (a, favorite  number  with  the  Israel- 
ites, and  therefore  to  be  supposed  acceptable  to  their 
guardian  god),  and  causing  a  holocaust  to  be  offered  on 
each,  of  animals  which  were  known  to  make  the  cus- 
tomary tribute  to  that  deity,  separates  himself  from 
Balak  under  the  pretence  that  it  was  suitable  for  the 
monarch  to  watch  his  own  offering,  and  goes  away  him- 
self to  a  solitary  place,  as  if  to  a  private  interview  with 
Jehovah.* 

Returning  from  it,  he  reports  to  Balak,  (as  well  he 
might,  after  what  he  had  seen  with  his  own  eyes  of  the 
force  of  the  Israelites,  and  the  pusillanimous  fright  of 
the  people  of  the  neighbourhood,)  that  all  is  in  vain; 
Jehovah  will  not  consent  that  his  people  shall  be  cursed. 
As  Balak's  apprehensions  and  distress  increase,  how- 
ever, he  naturally  becomes  more  unwilling  to  abandon 
the  hope  of  advantage  from  the  magician's  interposition, 
as  long  as  any  chance  remains ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  the  plainly  eligible  course  for  the  latter, 
having  first  taken  care  of  his  character  for  truth  and 
consistency,  to  consent  to  repeat  the  attempt  which  he 
had  pronounced  futile,  as  often  as  the  monarch,  in  this 
extremity  of  his  fear,  should  himself  desire ;  since  the 
more  persevering  good-will  Balaam  manifested,  the 
larger  compensation  he  might  expect.  Accordingly,  he 
goes  through  the  same  formalities  twice  more,  shifting 
his  place  each  time,  probably  through  some  hope  enter- 
tained by  Balak,  that  he  might  secure  a  more  auspicious 
spot,  and  not  improbably  through  some  wish  of  his  own 
to  examine  the  Israelitish  encampment  from  different 

*  Numb.  xxii.  36  -  xxiiL  3. 
VOL.  I.  49 


386  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  — XXVII.  23.  [LECT. 

points  of  view.  The  disappointment  of  Balak  at  length 
Tents  itself  in  rage,  and  he  dismisses  Balaam  abruptly 
to  his  home,  who,  to  fix  the  impression  of  his  super- 
natural knowledge,  breaks  out,  in  parting,  into  prognos- 
tics of  the  coming  triumphs  of  Israel.  These  were  such 
as  his  observations  had  now  satisfied  him,  that  the  event 
would  speedily  fulfil  in  part ;  while  in  part  the  pre- 
dictions, thrown  in  to  fill  up  the  imaginary  outline,  were 
so  general  in  their  terms,  or  so  indefinite  as  to  the  time 
of  their  accomplishment,  that  no  refutation  of  them  was 
to  be  feared,  which  would  prejudice  his  character  for 
foreknowledge.* 

*  Numb,  xxiii.  4-xxiv.  25.  —  "God  met  Balaam, and  he  said  unto  him, 
•I  have  prepared  seven  altars,  and  I  have  offered  upon  every  altar  a 
bullock  and  a  ram ' "  (4).  That  is,  Balaam  said,  on  returning  to  Balak,  that 
he  had  had  an  interview  with  Jehovah,  and  had  pleaded  with  him  to  be 
propitious,  in  consideration  of  his  having  presented,  in  Balak's  behalf, 
such  offerings  as  Jehovah  was  accustomed  to  accept.  —  "  Lo  !  the  people 
shall  dwell  alone  "  &c.  (9) ;  it  is  destined  to  attain  to  a  singular  eminence. 
—  "  Let  me  die  the  death  of  the  righteous  (D''"^.!^^ ,  apparently  a  parono- 
masia upon  Sx'^.K'": ,  Israel),  and  let  my  last  end  be  like  his"  (10);  that  is, 
Oh  that  I  may  be  as  fortunate  to  the  end  of  my  days,  as  that  people  is 
destined  to  be,  and  my  lot  [or  my  enterprises]  for  the  future  he  prospered 
like  theirs.  r>'''^n>!>  has  here  a  similar  sense  to  what  I  have  ascribed  to 
"inx  on  page  227.  — "  Come,  I  pray  thee,  with  me  unto  another  place," 
(13,  compare  27),  "Peor"  (28)  perhaps  being  selected  as  the  site  of  a  tem- 
ple of  Baal-Peor.  The  repetition  of  trials  of  this  kind,  when  the  first  failed, 
was  in  the  spirit  of  the  ancient  idolatries.  Augustus,  says  Suetonius,  (cap. 
96,)  "  circa  Perusiam  sacrificio  non  litante,  cum  augeri  hostias  imperasset" 
"  Si  primis  hostiis  litatura  non  erat,  alise  post  easdem  duct^  hostise  csede- 
bantur."  Aul.  Gel.  lib.  4,  cap.  6.  — "The  spirit  of  God"  (xxiv.  2);  a 
divine  impulse,  as  Balaam  pretended.  —  Verse  11  does  not  imply  that 
Balaam  obtained  no  reward.  Balak,  in  the  extremity  of  his  alarm,  hints 
to  Balaam,  that  if  he  would  even  now  relent,  and  do  the  office  which  had 
been  sought  at  his  hands,  all  that  had  yet  been  done  for  him  was  as  noth- 
ing, compared  with  what  should  be.  — "  There  shall  come  a  star  out  of 
Jacob  "  (17).  A  star  is  a  natural  and  a  scriptural  figure,  for  princely  and 
triumphant  power.  Compare  Is.  xiv.  12.  In  this,  and  the  four  next 
following  verses,  we  have  merely  Balaam's  declaration,  (founded  on  the 
observations  which  he  had  made  on  the  relative  strength  and  spirit  of  the 
parties,  but  without  specifications  of  circumstances  or  time,)  that  the 


XVI.]  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  — XXVIX.  23.  387 

Such  I  conceive  to  be  the  simple  account  of  the 
general  contents  of  a  passage  of  Scripture,  which  has 
been  the  subject  of  much  speculation.  At  the  time 
when  Canaan  was  invaded,  the  superstitions  prevalent 
among  idolaters  made  it  natural  for  them  to  have  re- 
course, in  any  exigency,  to  those  who  cultivated  arts  of 
sorcery,  and  were  believed  to  be  able  to  influence  the 
gods.  Balaam  was  such  a  person ;  and  he  proceeded 
in  precisely  the  manner  in  which  we  should  expect  to 
find  an  impostor  of  his  class  proceeding,  if  he  had  a 
king  for  his  suitor  and  an  occasion  of  great  publicity 
for  the  exercise  of  his  cunning,  and  was  contriving  to 
turn  the  transaction  to  as  great  account  as  possible,  both 
in  respect  to  present  gain,  and  to  permanent  credit  as 
a  master  of  his  craft.  He  needed  only  to  know  the 
force  and  enthusiasm  of  the  IsraeUtes,  and  the  want  of 
spirit  and  of  preparation  on  the  ppirt  of  those  whom 

Israelites  would  prove  too  powerful  for  their  neighbours.  —  The  text  of 
verses  22-  24  is  very  uncertain ;  but  I  understand,  to  sum  up  all  in  a  few 
words,  that  the  pretended  seer  chose  to  end  his  discourse  with  a  climax, 
saying  that  the  conquests  and  revolutions  he  had  spoken  of  were  not  all 
that  were  ever  to  take  place  ;  that  there  would  be  others  yet,  in  later 
times ;  a  declaration  which  he  might  make  witli  little  risk  to  his  reputa- 
tion, since  he  added,  that  he  did  not  undertake  to  declare  when  the  events 
he  foretold  in  such  indefinite  terms  should  occur.  "  Who  shall  be  living," 
he  asks,  "when  God  shall  do  this?"  —  "Until  Ashur  shall  carry  thee 
away  captive  "  (22).  "  And  ships  shall  come  from  the  coast  of  Chittim, 
and  shall  afflict  Ashur,  and  shall  afflict  Eber,  and  he  also  shall  perish  for 
ever"  (24).  "Ashur,"  I  take  to  mean  Assyria, from  whose  neighbourhood 
he  had  come ;  "  Chittim,"  people  beyond  the  sea,  the  word  having  a 
vagueness  of  somewhat  the  same  kind  as  our  word  Indies ;  and  "Eber," 
the  Hebrews,  of  whose  present  triumphs  he  had  been  speaking.  And 
what  he  says  has  this  definiteness,  and  no  more ;  that  the  revolutions 
of  empire  should  not  stop  with  that  which  was  now  impending ;  that  after 
the  Israelites  had  conquered  the  Kenites  and  others,  land  forces  should 
at  some  time  come  from  the  inland  direction,  that  of  Assyria,  and  conquer 
them  ;  and  then  sea  forces,  at  some  time,  would  come  from  the  other 
quarter,  and  conquer  the  conquerors.  The  thing  was  very  likely  to  occur 
in  some  age  of  the  world's  life.  But  if  it  did  not,  the  soothsayer  lost 
nothing ;  he  would  not  be  here  to  be  refuted. 


388  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  — XXVII.  23.  [LECT. 

they  had  terrified,  to  be  sure  that  they  must  conquer. 
It  was  not,  however,  for  him  to  lose  the  opportunity  of 
enriching  himself,  and  making  himself  conspicuous,  by 
prejudging  the  question  from  the  first,  and  saying  that 
he  could  do  nothing.  His  consent  to  use  his  mediation, 
when  first  applied  to  by  the  messengers,  indicates  a 
friendly  disposition  towards  Balak,  and  naturally  excites 
that  prince  to  further  solicitation.  On  the  other  hand, 
his  declaration,  that  he  can  only  do  as  Jehovah  shall 
dictate,  goes  to  confirm  his  character  with  them  for 
candor,  disinterestedness,  and  veracity ;  they  could  not 
be  surprised  to  learn  that  Balaam,  powerful  as  he  was, 
could  achieve  nothing  of  what  they  desired,  except  so 
far  as  he  should  be  able  to  conciliate  or  overrule  the 
deity,  who  had  so  powerfully  protected  his  people 
against  the  gods  of  Egypt ;  and  by  placing  the  question 
on  this  ground  from  the  first,  he  provided  himself  with 
a  defence,  when  his  final  announcement  of  inability  to 
pronounce  the  curse  should  be  made.  His  further 
measures,  as  they  are  recorded  in  this  passage,  all  bear 
upon  the  threefold  object  of  keeping  the  king  in  his 
toils  till  he  should  have  received  a  large  reward  ; 
making  his  consequence  widely  known ;  and  preparing 
himself  to  pronounce  at  last  a  decision,  which  should 
establish  and  extend  his  estimation  as  a  proficient  in  his 
pretended  art. 

Another  measure  adopted  by  him,  of  which  we  are 
told  further  on,  is  equally  consistent  with  his  character, 
as  I  have  represented  it.  He  had  seen  that  the  Israel- 
ites, remaining  well  organized  and  resolute  as  they 
seemed,  could  not  be  driven  back  by  the  feeble  races 
into  whose  neighbourhood  they  had  come  ;  and  this 
conclusion  he  communicates  to  Balak  in  the  form  which 
has   been  commented  on,  saying,  that  Jehovah,  their 


XVI.]  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  — XXVII.  23.  389 

divinity,  would  not  consent  to  have  them  cursed.*  He 
knew,  however,  that  if  they  could  be  seduced  into  the 
idolatrous  and  lascivious  practices  of  Midian,  a  course  of 
such  hostility  to  their  institutions  and  law  would  be 
fatal  to  all  subordination,  and  involve  an  abandonment 
of  all  private  sense  of  character;  and  that,  in  the  social 
dismemberment  which  would  follow,  they  would  be  in 
a  condition  to  be  overcome.  In  advising  to  this  attempt, 
he  offered  no  contradiction  to  his  previous  course.  On 
the  contrary,  the  spirit  of  the  counsel  evidently  was, 
Though  Jehovah,  their  God,  refuses  to  permit  them  to 
be  doomed,  as  long  as  they  are  obedient,  yet  he  cannot 
prevent  them  from  breaking  their  fealty  to  him,  and,  if 
you  can  persuade  them  to  disloyalty,  his  protection  will 
be  forfeited. 

The  scene  of  these  transactions,  was  the  country  of 
Midian  and  Moab,  and  the  camp  of  Balak.  Thither 
also  we  are  accordingly  to  look  for  the  origin  of  the 
narrative,  written  or  oral,  which  has  been  transmitted 
to  us,  and  which,  in  all  probability,  was  preserved  by 
Moses  in  the  same  shape  in  which  it  reached  him.  It 
probably  became  known  to  him,  after  the  attack  upon  the 
Midianites,  of  which  we  are  soon  to  read.  The  reason 
of  his  publishing  and  preserving  it,  is  easily  assigned. 
It  was  to  his  purpose  to  use  all  methods  to  encourage 
his  inexperienced  people  to  the  work  which  was  before 
them,  a  work  to  be  only  begun  in  his  life-time,  and 
prosecuted  after  his  death ;  and  nothing  could  serve  this 
purpose  more  effectually,  than  an  authentic  narrative  of 
a  transaction  like  that  on  which  we  have  been  remark- 
ing, indicating,  as  it  did,  the  panic  which  prevailed  in  the 
region,  and  tending  to  extend  it  further,  and  thus  show- 
ing, that  the  Israelites  had  little  to  fear,  except  from 
their  own  timidity. 

*  Compare  Numb,  xxiii.  21. 


390  NUMBERS  XX.   1.— XXVII.  23.  [LECT. 

The  treacherous  advice,  which,  a  little  further  on,  we 
shall  find  retrospectively  alluded  to,  as  having  been 
given  by  Balaam,*  was  attended,  for  the  moment,  with 
but  too  good  success.  The  Israelites,  dazzled  and 
bewildered,  it  is  likely,  by  magnificent  and  seductive 
appliances  of  vice,  to  which,  in  their  simple  wandering 
life,  they  had  been  all  unused,  were  prevailed  on  by  the 
idolaters  of  Moab  and  Midian,  to  take  part  in  the  riotous 
and  lustful  orgies  of  theu*  gods ;  and,  as  before  by  an 
insubordination  which  threatened  the  permanency  of  the 
state,  so  now  by  practices  which  outraged  the  great 
principle  and  object  of  its  institution,  they  created  a 
necessity  for  a  severe  and  exemplary  visitation  of  the 
Divine  displeasure.  To  present  the  principles  of  inter- 
pretation, which  I  regard  as  applicable  to  the  narrative 
in  the  twenty-fifth  chapter,  would  be  only  to  repeat 
what  I  submitted  in  treating  of  the  insurrection  of  Korah 
and  his  confederates.!  I  but  add  the  remark,  that  the 
reasons,  which  in  the  former  case  dictated  a  direct 
supernatural  interposition,  not  existing  in  the  present 
instance  (since  there  was  now  no  collision  between 
different  portions  of  the  people,  to  exasperate  them 
one  against  another),  the  punishment  of  the  offenders 
was  committed  to  that  portion  who  remained  faithful ; 
the  rather,  it  may  be  thought,  as  this  course  would  tend 
to  excite  them  to  a  greater  abhorrence  of  the  sin.  J 

•  Numb.  xxxL  16.  t  PP-  3.58,  359. 

X  In  XXV.  2,  3,  there  is  no  intimation  that  the  guilty  part  of  the  people 
abjured  their  faith  in  Jehovah,  or  so  much  as  adopted  a  belief  in  Baal- 
Peor  along  with  it  What  they  did  was,  to  participate  in  the  licentious 
acts  by  which  his  devotees  professed  to  honor  him,  "  And  Israel  [some 
of  the  Israelites,  as  the  context  shows,  and  as  the  Samaritan  copy 
expressly  reads]  joined  himself  unto  Baal-Peor";  rather  bound  them- 
selves with  his  badge.  —  "  Take  all  the  heads  [chiefs]  of  the  people"  (4) ; 
i.  e.  apparently,  take  them  to  sit  in  judgment  on  the  guilty ;  compare  5. 
"  Hang  them  up  "  ;  that  is,  their  bodies,  after  they  are  slain,  as  I  am  to 
show  hereafter.  "Against  the  sun";  compare  Deut.  xxi.  23.  —  "Those 
that  died  in  the  plague  were  twenty  and  four  thousand  "  (9).    The  hint 


XVI.]  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  — XXVII.  23.  391 

Preparatory  to  a  division  of  the  territory,  about  to  be 
conquered,  into  districts  proportioned  to  the  population 
of  the  several  tribes,  another  census  is  directed  to  be 
taken ;  and  from  the  fact,  that  the  names  of  the  great 
families  composing  the  respective  tribes  are  now  re- 
corded, it  may  be  gathered,  that  the  arrangement  con- 
templated such  a  subdivision  of  the  territory  of  each 
tribe,  that  its  several  branches  (distinguished  by  their 
descent  from  different  sons  of  the  common  progenitor 
of  the  tribe)  should  each  compose  a  separate  neighbour- 
hood. The  numerical  statements  exhibited  in  this  chap- 
ter, compared  with  those  of  the  former  census,  are  such 
as  to  increase  our  distrust  of  the  integrity  of  the  text, 
in  cases  where  figures  are  concerned.  The  sum  of  the 
whole  people  is  less,  by  about  two  thousand,  than  what 
was  ascertained  forty  years  before ;  and  this  does  not 
surprise  us,  when  we  consider  the  hfe  they  had  led 
meanwhile,  and  the  great  mortality  on  two  occasions.* 
But  the  changes  represented  to  have  taken  place  in 
some  of  the  tribes,  are  so  remarkable  as  to  justify  the 
behef  of  a  vitiation  of  the  record.  For  example,  the 
tribe  of  Simeon  is  represented  to  have  been  reduced  by 
nearly  two  thirds  of  its  number ;  and  that  of  Manasseh, 

thrown  out  above  (p.  357,  compare  56),  on  the  uncertainty  of  numbers, 
has  of  course  equal  application  here.  "The  plague"  (compare  5,  8,)  is 
the  execution  done  by  the  faithful  upon  the  offenders.  — "  Phinehas,  the  son 
of  Eleazar,"  &c.  (11-13) ;  Phinehas,  by  the  zeal  he  hath  manifested  for 
my  honor  and  the  people's  virtue,  hath  shown  himself  worthy  of  that 
priesthood,  which  is  his  and  his  posterity's  ty  hereditary  claim,  and  which 
I  now  confirm  to  him.  The  act  of  Phinehas  was  of  the  greater  impor- 
tance, as  it  exhibited  an  example  of  determination,  to  excite  others,  (thus 
checking  the  sin,  and  arresting  the  extension  of  its  punishment,  compare 
8,  11,)  and  as  the  crime,  which  it  avenged,  was  that  of  persons  of  high 
rank  (compare  14,  15;,  and  was  done  with  publicity  and  defiance,  to  the 
overthrow  of  all  subordination  (which  was  the  very  point  Balaam  had  had 
in  view)  and  in  mockery  of  the  people's  repentance.  Compare  6. 
*  Numb,  xvi.,  xxv. 


"*^v^^t392  NUMBERS  XX.  1.— XXVII.  23.  [LECT. 

on  the  other  hand,  to  have  increased  from  thirty-two 
thousand  two  hundred,  to  nearly  fifty-three  thousand.* 
We  read,  at  the  beginning  of  the  following  chap- 
ter, that  the  daughters  of  a  descendant  of  Manasseh, 
named  Zelophehad,  understanding,  that,  according  to 
arrangements  just  adopted,  their  father's  family,  for 
want  of  male  representatives,  was  to  be  excluded  from 
a  share  in  the  territory  of  its  tribe,  made  a  representa- 
tion to  Moses  on  the  subject,  —  who  accordingly  re- 
ceived a  direction  to  the  following  effect,  for  the  deter- 
mination of  all  similar  cases ;  viz.  That,  if  a  proprietor 
died  without  male  children,  his  daughters  were  to  in- 
herit his  land ;  that,  in  default  of  direct  heirs  in  the 
female  line,  it  was  to  go  to  his  brothers;  if  he  left  no 


•  Numb.  xxvL  —  Verse  4  is  evidently  defective  ;  but  the  corrnption  is 
very  ancient,  being  found  in  the  Septuagint  version,  and  tlie  Samaritan 
copy,  as  well  as  the  Hebrew.  —  "Notwithstanding  [but]  the  children  of 
Korah  died  not"  (11).  These  words  have  been  thought  to  intimate,  that  the 
children  of  Dathan  and  Abirara,  who  are  mentioned  in  the  preceding 
verse,  did  die.  But  I  cannot  think  the  argument  sound.  The  words  may 
have  been  originally  a  gloss  upon  the  text,  by  some  Levite  of  this  race, 
(compare  1  Chron.  vi.  33-37,  and  the  inscriptions  of  twelve  Psalms,  e.  g. 
Ps,  xlii.,)  who  gratified  his  family  pride  by  noting,  that,  though  Korah 
fell,  his  line  did  not  perish.  But  witliout  resorting  to  this  supposition,  it 
would  be  not  unnatural  for  Moses  (particularly  interested  as  he  was  in  the 
Kohathite  division  of  Levi,  as  belonging  to  its  number)  to  remark,  that  the 
death  of  the  head  of  one  of  its  families  did  not  cause  the  race  to  become 
extinct,  without  implying  any  distinction  in  this  particular,  between  Korah 
and  the  other  persons  mentioned  in  the  context  Further,  it  may  well  be 
questioned,  whether,  in  a  list  of  heads  of  families  prepared  for  the  pur- 
pose named  above,  the  names  of  Dathan  and  Abiram  would  have  been 
given,  had  they  left  no  posterity  to  inherit  land.  —  The  tribes  whose  num- 
bers are  stated  to  have  diminished,  are  those  of  Reuben,  Simeon,  Gad, 
Ephraim,  and  NaphtalL  —  "  Notwithstanding,  the  land  shall  be  divided  by 
lot"  &c.  (55);  rather,  "  Surely  the  land  shall  be  allotted  according  to  the 
names "  &-c.  "  By  lot  "  ;  that  is,  by  allotment,  by  deliberate  assignment 
here,  not  by  any  dictation  of  chance.  For  such  a  use  of  S"<1  J  ,  see  Judg.  i.  3  ; 
Is.  Ivii.  6;  Ps.  xvi.  5;  cxxv.  3;  Dan.  xii.  13.  —  The  language  in  64,  65 
has  the  same  force  as  that  in  xiv.  29,  30,  35 ;  and  if  the  remarks  made  on 
that  passage  (p.  347)  have  any  weight,  they  are  equally  applicable  here. 


XVI.]  NUMBERS  XX.  1.  — XXVII.  23.  393 

brothers,  then  to  his  father's  brothers ;  and,  failing  that 
relationship,  then  to  his  nearest  collateral  kinsman.  In 
cases,  where  a  parent  left  daughters  and  sons,  it  is  to  be 
presumed  that  the  former,  being  incompetent  to  inherit 
land,  would  be  provided  for  from  personal  property, 
which  consisted  in  money,  slaves,  domestic  animals,  and 
garments,  these  last,  in  a  state  of  society  in  which  the 
fashions  of  dress  did  not  change,  appearing  to  have  con- 
stituted one  of  the  recognised  forms  of  wealth.* 

Forewarned,  at  this  juncture,  of  his  near  approach  to 
the  close  of  his  days,  Moses  receives  a  promise,  that 
first,  from  a  mountainous  ridge  near  at  hand,  he  shall 
enjoy  a  view  of  the  region  which  he  is  not  to  be  per- 
mitted to  enter.f  In  compliance  with  his  request,  that, 
before  his  departure,  a  future  leader  for  the  people  may 
be  designated,  he  is  directed  to  present  Joshua,  the 
partner  hitherto  of  so  many  of  his  cares  and  toils,  before 
the  chief  priest  and  the  congregation,  and  address  to  him, 
in  their  presence,  a  charge  respecting  the  due  execution 
of  his  trust.!  This  public  recognition  of  Joshua,  during 
Moses'  lifetime,  doubtless  served  to  prepare  the  way 
for  his  undisputed  assumption  of  the  high  authority  about 
to  pass  into  his  hands. 

*  Numb.  xxviL  1  - 11.  Compare  xxvi.  33.  —  There  is  no  reason  for 
understanding  verse  3  to  imply,  that  if  Zelophehad  had  died  as  an  accom- 
plice of  Korah,  his  descendants  must  have  been  disinherited.  The  fact, 
that  he  had  not,  is  but  named,  to  conciliate  a  favorable  hearing. 

t  xxvu.  12  - 14.  t  xxvii.  15  -  23. 


VOL.   I.  50 


r 


394  NUMBERS   XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  [LECT. 


LECTURE    XVII. 

NUMBERS    XXVIII.    1.  — XXXVI.    13. 

Directory  for  Offerings  on  the  Periodical  Celebrations.  — 
Rules  respecting  the  Obligation  of  Vows.  —  Occasion  and 
Prosecution  of  the  War  with  the  Midianites. — Considera- 
tion OF  the  Severities  exercised  therein. — Laws  respect- 
ing the  Division  of  Booty  taken  in  War.  —  Establishment 
OF  the  Reubenites,  the  Gadites,  and  Half  of  the  Tribe  of 
Manasseh,  in  the  District  east  of  the  Jordan.  —  List  of 
the  Marches  from  Egypt  to  Canaan.  —  Command  to  expel 
the  Canaanites.  —  Definition  op  the  Boundaries  of  Pales- 
tine.—  Appoi.ntment  of  Princes  to  make  a  Partition  of  the 
Territory.  —  Direction  for  Levitical  Cities,  and  Cities  of 
Refuge.  —  Institution  of  Goelism.  —  Treatment  of  Justifia- 
ble Homicide.  —  Rule  to  prevent  the  Transfer  of  Land  by 
Heiresses  to  another  Tribe.^ 

The  twenty-eighth  and  twenty-ninth  chapters  of 
Numbers  resemble  the  twenty-third  of  Leviticus ;  con- 
tEuning,  like  that  passage,  a  directory  for  the  observance 
of  the  national  periodical  celebrations,  arranged  in  their 
chronological  order;  incorporating  some  particulars,  in 
respect  to  the  forms  of  offering,  which  had  heretofore 
been  exhibited  in  different  connexions;  and  adding 
some  others,  these  latter  for  the  most  part  relating  to 
a  more  costly  and  imposing  ceremonial,  such  as  the 
improved  circumstances  of  the  people  would  hence- 
forward admit.  The  passage,  taken  in  connexion  with 
previous  directions  upon  the  same  subject,  presents 
one  of  the  numerous  striking  instances  of  that  pro- 
gressive character  of  the  Law,  on  which  I  formerly 
remarked.* 

*  See  above,  pp.  145,  166. 


XVIL]  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  395 

In  respect  to  the  perpetual  Burnt  Offering,  at  the 
Tabernacle,  of  a  lamb  in  the  morning,  and  another  in 
the  evening,  of  every  day,  with  their  proper  append- 
ages, nothing  new  is  here  prescribed  ;  *  but  notice  is 
repeatedly  given,  that  it  is  never  to  be  superseded  by 
other  ceremonies,  —  that  all  others  are  to  be  additional  to 
it.t  The  direction,  that  on  every  Sabbath  day  these 
offerings  shall  be  tripled,  is  now  for  the  first  time  given.J 
The  celebrations  of  the  first  day  of  each  month,  had 
before  been  but  incidentally  mentioned.^  The  ritual  for 
them  is  now  ordained,  to  consist  of  a  Sin  Offering  of  a 
goat,  and  a  rich  Burnt  Offering  of  two  young  bullocks, 
one  ram,  and  seven  yeariing  lambs,  with  their  appro- 
priate accompanying  offerings  of  flour,  wine,  and  oil,  as 
these  were  regulated  by  a  standing  law.||  A  material 
addition  is  made  to  the  ritual  of  the  Passover  and  of  the 
Pentecost;  sacrifices,  the  same  with  those  appropriate 
to  the  New  Moons,  being  ordained  to  be  offered  on 
each  day  of  the  week  of  those  great  festivals,  while 
before,  no  more  had  been  commanded,  than  that 
there  should  be  a  Burnt  Offering  on  every  day  of  the 
Passover  week,  and  that  on  one  day  of  that  of  the 
Pentecost  there  should  be  presented  a  Burnt  Offering 
of  seven  Iambs,  two  rams,  and  one  bullock,  besides  a 
kid  for  a  Sin  Offering,  and  two  yearling  lambs  for  a 
Peace  Offering.il  The  same  remark  holds  good  of  the 
Feast  of  Trumpets  and  the  Day  of  Atonement ;  ex- 
cept that  on  these  two  occasions,  there  was  to  be  but 
one  bullock,  in  the  sacrifice,  instead  of  two.  On  the 
latter  of  these  days,  the  appropriate  ceremonies  of  the 

*  Numb.  xx\-iii.  3-8.     Compare  Ex.  xxix.  38  -  42. 
t  Numb,  xxviii.  15,  23,  24,  31,  &c.  t  xxviii.  9,  10. 

§  X.  10.    See  p.  337,  note.  ||  xv.  3-11. 

t  xxviii.  16-31.    Compare  Lev.  xxiii.  8,  18,  19. 


396  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  [LECT. 

occasion,  as  before   described,  were  also  to  be   gone 
through ;  and,  on  the  former,  those  of  a  New  Moon.* 
But  the  most  prominent  new  feature  in  this  compend, 
is  that  of  the  ritual  of  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles.     That 
festival  was  designed  for  a  commemoration  of  what  had 
not  been  consummated  at  any  earlier  period  in  the 
history,  than  that  to  which  the  passage  now  before  us 
relates.     The  sojourn  in  booths  in  the  wilderness,  had 
been   hitherto  matter  of  anticipation   and   experience. 
From  this  time  forward,  it  was  to  be  remembered  as  an  in- 
teresting incident, belonging  to  the  "day  of  small  things" 
in  the  national  history.     We  may  imagine  the  enthusi-  ■ 
asm,  with  which,  just  emerged  from  the  wilderness,  the 
people  would  receive  a  command   to   celebrate,  with 
magnificent  holiday  observance,  a  course  of  travel,  which 
at  length  had  brought  them  where  they  saw  conquest, 
and  a  secure  national  establishment  within  their  grasp ; 
and,  in  the  place  where  this  record  appears,  it  is  alto- 
gether natural  to  trace  the  hand  of  one,  who  wrote  at 
the  point  of  time,  when  the  proper  occasion  for  the  ar- 
rangement had  arisen,  and  when  the  arrangement  was 
accordingly  made.     Before,  no  more  particular  direction 
had  been  given  respecting  offerings  during  the  Feast  of 
Tabernacles,  than  that  they  should  be  presented  upon 
each  of  its  days.     It  is  now  ordained,  that,  for  seven 
days  successively,  there  shall  be  presented  a  Sin  Offer- 
ing of  a  goat,  and  a  Burnt  Offering  of  fourteen  yearling 
lambs,  two  rams,  and  a  number  of  bullocks,  beginning 
with  thirteen,  and  diminishing  by  one  each  day ;  and 
that  the  feast  shall  close  by  an  offering,  on  the  eighth 
day,  the  same  as  that  of  the  Feast  of  Trumpets,  or 
first  day  of  the  civil  year.f 

•  Numb.  xxix.  1-11.    Compare  Lev.  xxiii.  24,  27 ;  xvi. 

t  Numb.  xxix.  12-38.     Compare  Lev.  xxiii.  33-36,  39-43.     The 


XVII.]  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVi.   13.  397 

We  have  seen,  from  time  to  time,  that  it  was  not  the 
spirit  of  the  Law  to  encourage  free-will  offerings.*  In  the 
next  following  chapter,  we  find  a  short  series  of  regula- 
tions, tending  (while  they  secured  the  integrity  of  all  who 
should  choose  to  make  vows,  whether  relating  to  the 
dedication  of  some  gift,  or  to  some  ascetic  observance,)! 
to  diminish  their  frequency,  and  especially  to  obviate 
the  inconvenience  of  their  being  made  by  persons  so 
situated,  that  the  cost  of  their  fulfilment  would  fall  upon 
others.  If  a  person  in  an  independent  condition  made 
a  vow,  (alike  a  woman,  widow  or  divorced,  as  a  man  of 
full  age,)  he  made  it  on  his  own  responsibility,  and  he 
must  keep  it.  If  it  was  made  by  one  in  a  relation 
of  dependence,  a  wife,  or  an  unmarried  daughter,  who 
might  make  it  lightly,  as  not  being  personally  liable  for 
the  cost,  it  was  of  no  binding  force,  unless  the  husband 
or  father  were  acquainted  with  it,  and  either  expressly, 
or  by  silence,  testified  his  consent  at  the  time.f  His 
consent  at  the  time  made  the  vow  his  own,  which  he 
was  not  afterwards  at  hberty  to  retract ;  ^  otherwise  he 
would  have  been  tempted  to  negligence  on  the  subject, 
and  the  priests,  or  any  others  interested,  might  be 
wronged.  The  married  woman  who  made  a  vow,  and 
became  a  widow  before  the  time  for  its  fulfilment,  was 
liable  or  not  upon  the  same  principles ;  that  is,  if  her 
husband  had  assented,  her  engagement  continued  good 
against  herself,  and,  without  doubt,  being  construed  as 
his  own  engagement,  was  a  lawful  incumbrance  on  the 

bullocks  oiFered  on  the  seven  successive  days,  amounted  to  the  number 
of  seventy,  a  favorite  number  with  the  Jews.  It  has  been  estimated, 
(Lowman's  "  Rational  of  the  Ritual "  &c.,  p.  205,)  that  if  the  yearly  ex- 
pense of  the  national  sacrifices  were  assessed  equally  upon  the  twelve 
tribes,  the  sum  payable  annually  by  each,  would,  at  a  liberal  computation, 
amount  to  less  than  five  hundred  dollars. 

*  pp.  308,  330.  t  Numb.  xxx.  2, 13. 

X  xxx.  3-9.  §  xxx.  15. 


398  NUMBERS  XXVIII.   1.  — XXXVI.  13.  [LECT. 

property  he  had  left ;  if  he  had  dissented,  she  and  his 
estate  were  free.*  The  case  of  male  children,  continuing 
members  of  their  father's  family,  is  not  treated.  It  is 
probable,  that  in  mere  boyhood  a  person  was  not  ca- 
pable of  making  a  legal  vow,  and  that  after  that  period 
he  was  bound,  as  he  was  able,  to  provide  for  himself  the 
means  of  executing  whatever  vow  he  made.  It  can 
hardly  be  supposed,  (though  such,  without  authority 
from  the  text,  has  been  the  exposition  of  some  com- 
mentators,) that  the  observance  of  the  vow  of  an  igno- 
rant and  thoughtless  child  would  be  exacted  w^hen  he 
should  arrive  at  full  age. 

Hitherto  such  contests  as  we  have  seen  the  Israelites 
engaged  in,  appear  to  have  been  of  a  defensive  charac- 
ter, according  to  the  strictest  acceptation  of  that  phrase. 
We  are  now  to  read  of  an  assault  of  theirs  upon  a 
neighbouring  tribe,  the  Midianites ;  and  questions  pre- 
sent themselves  respecting  the  justifiableness  of  that 
assault,  and  of  the  manner  in  which  it  was  conducted. 
We  are  told,  that  Moses  received  a  divine  command  to 
"  avenge  the  children  of  Israel  of  the  Midianites,"  that 
is,  to  punish  the  Midianites  for  their  recent  treachery ; 
that,  in  pursuance  of  this  command,  he  despatched  a 
party  of  twelve  thousand  men,  who  attacked  some  of 
the  cities  of  that  people,  put  to  death  a  portion  of  its 
male  population,  and  returned  with  numerous  prisoners 
(women  and  children),  and  a  large  booty  of  beeves, 
asses,  and  sheep  ;  and  that  Moses  commanded  an  indis- 
criminate slaughter  of  the  women  of  adult  age,  and  the 
male  children,  and  a  retention  of  the  female  children  as 
slaves,  prescribing  also  the  prmciples  of  a  division  of  all 
the  spoil.! 

In  conducting  this  argument,  I  wave  any  benefit 

*  Numb.  XXX.  10- la  t  xxxL  1-47. 


XVII.  ]  NUMBERS  XXVHI.  1.-- XXXVI.  13.  399 

which  may  be  supposed  to  be  derived  from  the  repre- 
sentation, that  the  whole,  or  a  part,  of  these  transactions, 
took  place  by  virtue  of  a  divine  command.  When  it  is 
urged,  that  the  acts  were  morally  wrong,  and  therefore, 
being  inconsistent  with  the  character  of  God,  were 
not  done  by  the  authority  of  any  delegate  of  his,  the 
apologist  of  the  Mosaic  records  reasons  in  a  vicious  cir- 
cle, if  he  replies,  that  a  divine  command  determines  the 
character  of  an  act,  and  that  accordingly  the  acts  in 
question,  being  commanded  by  God,  were  right. 

Was  it  right,  then,  upon  acknowledged  principles,  for 
the  Israelites,  under  the  existing  circumstances,  to  at- 
tack the  people  of  Midian  1  This,  I  think,  is  a  question 
which  needs  not  detain  us  long. 

When  I  say,  "acknowledged  principles,"  I  am  of 
course  understood  to  nrean,  principles  acknowledged  by 
those  who  regard  self-defence  as  the  first  law  of  nature, 
both  for  individuals  and  communities ;  a  law,  nowhere 
abrogated  in  Scripture.  To  enter  into  the  controversy 
here  with  such  as  hold  a  different  opinion,  would  be  to 
write  what  would  be  superfluous  for  the  great  mass  of 
Christians. 

Of  the  lawful  causes  of  war,  none  is  more  unani- 
mously asserted  by  the  writers  upon  public  law,  than  an 
attempt,  on  the  part  of  one  community,  against  the 
political  institutions,  and  so  against  the  integrity  and 
internal  peace  of  another.  A  just  war,  no  doubt,  must 
be  a  defensive  war.  But  a  wise  and  effectual  self- 
defence  does  not  begin  when  the  arm  of  violence  is 
actually  uplifted,  and  the  assailed  stands  powerless 
before  it.  In  order,  even,  to  be  merciful  to  the  antago- 
nist, it  will  often  be  best  to  anticipate  his  action,  when 
his  injurious  purpose  has  been  ascertained.  So  against 
that  enemy,  which,  without  having  itself  unsheathed  the 
sword,  has  attempted  to  overthrow  the  government  of 


400  NUMBERS  XXVIIi.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  [LECT. 

a  country,  and  bring  on  it  the  ruin  of  anarchy  and  civil 
conflict,  all  the  rights  of  war,  as  universally  understood, 
take  effect.*  That  which  in  our  times  would  be  done 
by  a  nation,  which  should  send  emissaries  into  another 
nation  to  preach  rebellion,  was  done,  in  the  instance 
before  us,  by  the  Midianites  against  the  people  of  Israel. 
They  endeavoured  to  withdraw  that  people  from  their 
allegiance,  and  thus  not  only  to  remove  the  principles  of 
all  their  union,  prosperity,  and  peace,  but  to  prepare 
them  to  become  an  easy  conquest  for  their  own  arms. 
Bat  though  self-protection  is  the  right  and  the  duty 
of  individuals  and  of  nations,  vengeance  (properly  so 
called)  is  not  the  duty  nor  the  right  of  either.  Violent 
measures  are  justified,  so  far  as  they  are  necessary  for 
security,  (present  and  future,)  and  not  a  step  further. 
What  degree  and  kind  of  violent  procedure  existing 
circumstances  may  thus  render  necessary,  is  a  question, 
without  doubt,  which  men  are  Uable  to  determine  wrong, 
their  judgment  being  subject  to  be  swayed,  in  such 
cases,  by  their  passions.  But  the  principle  is  none  the 
less  clear,  on  account  of  one  or  another  erroneous 
application  which  may  be  made  of  it  In  the  present 
instance,  the  national  existence  of  the  Israelites,  and 
ultimately  the  lives  of  themselves  and  their  children,  (not 
to  speak  of  the  accomplishment  of  the  great  peculiar  ob- 
jects which  their  national  separation  was  designed  to 
promote,)  depended  on  their  being  secure  against  such 
treacherous  attempts  as  had  lately  been  made.  Under 
the  circumstances,  it  had  become  allowable  and  requisite 
for  them  to  do  all  that  was  needful,  to  guard  against  the 
repetition  of  such. 

•  It  would  be  useless  to  multiply  authorities,  which  might  be  had,  to 
an  indefinite  extent,  by  turning  to  the  approved  writers  on  international 
jurisprudence.  See  {instar  omnium)  Vattel,  "Droit  des  Gens"  &c.,  livre 
2,  §§  4i>-57. 


XVII.]  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.   13.  401 

How  much,  then,  was  needful  to  that  end  1  This  is 
the  question  that  remains ;  and,  keeping  this  statement 
of  it  distinctly  in  view,  I  suppose  that  we  may  come 
to  a  solution  of  the  .problem  of  the  consistency  of 
Moses'  conduct,  on  this  occasion,  with  the  character 
which  ostensibly  he  bore. 

If  it  is  right  to  wage  war  at  all,  it  is  not  only  right 
to  wage  it  in  such  a  manner  as  will  effect  its  object, 
but  it  would  be  wrong  to  wage  it  in  any  other  manner. 
War  is,  of  its  nature,  the  infliction  of  suffering  in  order 
to  an  ulterior  good.  The  infliction  of  any  degree  of 
suffering  is  unjustifiable,  except  so  far  as  it  tends  to 
that  result.  And  if,  in  the  prosecution  of  a  war,  the 
measures  adopted  are  of  such  lenity,  as  to  be  unsuita- 
ble to  produce  the  contemplated  end  of  protection  for 
the  present,  and  security  for  the  future,  the  mitigated 
evil  becomes  then  uncompensated,  causeless,  unjustifia- 
ble evil.     It  is  not  mercy  ;  it  is  cruelty  and  crime. 

No  principle  is  clearer  than  this  to  the  eye  of  reason, 
nor  more  familiarly  recognised  in  the  proceedings  of 
communities,  especially  in  the  usages  of  war ;  though, 
when  any  application  of  it,  however  wise  and  just,  leads 
to  severities  which  we  are  not  accustomed  to  think  of 
as  belonging  to  the  necessity  of  the  case,  our  feelings 
are  naturally  shocked.  It  is  the  business  of  humanity 
to  keep  continually  in  view  a  mitigation  of  the  miseries 
of  war,  and  to  induce  nations  to  settle  their  disputes 
at  less  cost  to  one  another.  But,  as  long  as  forcible  de- 
fence continues  to  be  necessary  against  profligate  inva- 
sion, so  long  the  force  exerted  ought  to  be  terrible 
enough  to  accomplish  its  eventually  merciful  end. 

The  principle  not  only  bears  upon  the  general  system 
of  the  conduct  of  wars,  but  has  a  righteous  applica- 
tion to  its  details.  — A  small  garrison,  for  example,  with 
the  advantage  of  its  fortifications,  might  put  to  death 

VOL.    I.  51 


402  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  [LECT. 

many  times  its  number  of  a  besieging  army,  before  it 
could  be  compelled  to  a  surrender ;  and  frequently  it 
would  d6  so,  when  it  had  no  hope  of  eventually  hold- 
ing out,  if  it  had  nothing  worse  to  fear,  in  case  of  its 
reduction,  than  if  it  had  capitulated  seasonably,  or  sus- 
tained defeat  in  a  contest  on  equal  terms,  in  the  open 
field.  The  law,  by  which  a  garrison,  acting  thus  wan- 
tonly, is  made  liable  to  be  put  to  the  sword,  does  not 
sacrifice  life.  In  its  whole  operation  and  result,  it  saves 
life  on  a  large  scale ;  though  the  recital  of  each  of  the 
rare  instances  of  its  occurrence  strikes  us  with  horror. — 
I  In  the  war  of  the  American  revolution,  an  officer  of  the 
hostile  army,  of  merit  and  accomplishments  to  interest 
all  feelings  most  strongly  in  his  behalf,  allowed  himself 
to  be  brought  into  a  situation,  where,  by  the  usages  of 
#  war,  his  life  was  forfeit.  The  exigency  was  a  most 
painful  one  to  him  on  whose  will  the  issue  depended. 
But  he  had  the  care  of  protecting  a  great  community, 
and  a  great  cause,  and  he  could  not  be  false'- to  such  a 
trust.  Whoever  is  able  to  vindicate  the  conduct  of  that 
just  and  merciful  man  on  the  occasion  to  which  I  refer, 
is  possessed  of  the  principles  of  justification  for  the 
conduct  of  Moses,  in  the  instance  now  under  our  notice. 
A  just  war,  I  have  remarked,  aims  at  the  accomplish- 
ment of  a  good  end  through  measures  of  dreadful 
severity.  This  is  equally  true  in  these  times,  as  of 
old.  The  difierence  is  only  that  of  violent  measures 
of  a  more  or  less  distressing  character  and  amount. 
With  the  progress  of  civihzation,  it  has  come  to  be 
understood  in  civilized  communities,  that  inflictions, 
formerly  resorted  to,  should  be  forborne.  Accord- 
ingly, without  the  use  of  such,  questions,  still  tried 
by  war,  are  settled  between  such  nations.  In  their 
conflicts  with  barbarous  races,  who  have  no  such 
understanding,  they  are  accustomed  to  adopt  harsher 


XVII.]  NUMBERS  XXVUl.   1.  — XXXVI.  13.  403 

measures ;  and  this,  for  the  simple  and  the  sound 
reason,  that  the  object  could  not  otherwise  be  gained, 
and  that,  if  they  were  to  allow  a  war  to  be  to  their 
adversaries  a  less  evil  than  those  adversaries  were  in 
the  habit  of  expecting  it  to  prove,  such  a  self-frustrating 
lenity  would  tempt  to  a  speedy  renewal  of  the  contest, 
with  all  its  mutually  inflicted  mischiefs. 

Severity,  in  short,  is  beneficent,  when  it  is  suited  to 
guard  against  the  necessity  of  its  own  repetition ;  and 
how  much  or  how  little  of  it  is  adequate  to  this  end,  is 
a  question  to  be  determined  by  reference  to  some  ex- 
isting state  of  society^  It  is  to  be  hoped  and  believed, 
that  the  time  will  come,  when  descriptions  of  wars,  as 
they  are  now  conducted,  will  call  up  feelings  of  the 
same  disgust,  with  which  it  is  natural  for  us  of  this  age 
to  look  at  the  record  of  the  manner  of  conducting  them 
among  the  uncivilized  nations  on  the  eastern  shore  of 
the  Mediterranean,  fifteen  centuries  before  the  Chris- 
tian era. 

I  return,  then,  to  the  remark,  that  Moses  was 
intrusted  with  the  protection  of  vast  interests,  and  that 
whatever  price  their  protection  required,  that  price  it 
was  his  duty  to  pay.  If  they  were  to  be  protected  by 
war,  then  it  was  by  war  conducted  agreeably  to  the 
habits  of  the  time;  otherwise  it  would  have  been  waged 
without  any  prospect  of  doing  its  office,  and  accordingly 
ought  not  to  have  been  waged  at  alL  Sufficient  suffer- 
ing to  be  likely  to  attain  the  end  ought  to  be  infficted, 
or  else  none  whatever.  They,  who  are  offended  with 
Moses'  conduct  on  this  occasion,  would  find  nothing  to 
condemn,  had  he  conducted  his  war  agreeably  to  now 
established  usages.  To  the  argument  implied  in  their 
view,  I  reply,  first,  that  these  usages  themselves  are  but 
a  very  partial  departure  from  the  course  which  in  Moses 
is  found  so  offensive ;  so  partial,  that,  even  if  he  had 


404  NUMBERS   XXVIII.   1.  — XXXVI.  13.  [LECT. 

adopted  them,  a  future  age,  more  enlightened  and  more 
tender  of  life  than  ours,  would  still  find  reason  to  renew 
the  complaint ;  and,  secondly,  that,  if  he  had  adopted 
them,  he  would  have  taken  a  course  so  inefficient,  that 
his  enemies  would  hardly  have  believed  him  in  earnest. 
His  forbearanc'e  would  have  been  but  an  invitation  to 
them  to  repeat  their  outrage,  and  with  it  the  occasion 
for  other  wars.* 

We  ought  to  be  careful  not  to  add  to  the  essential 
difficulty  of  this  question,  be  that  greater  or  less,  by 
any  unauthorized  assumption  respecting  the  amount  of 
bloodshed.  Readers  of  the  passage  perhaps  not  un- 
frequently  take  up  the  idea,  that  the  whole  people  of 
Midian  were  now  condemned  to  death  and  captivity ;  a 
supposition,  than  which  none  could  be  more  erroneous. 
On  the  contrary,  that  people  were,  a  few  generations 
later,  in  a  condition  to  subjugate  the  Israelites.!  It  is 
probable,  from  the  number  of  warriors  detailed   (one 

•  I  have  not  thought  it  nfecessary  to  collect  authorities  respecting  the 
horrors  admitted  to  belong  to  a  state  ^f  war  by  the  common  consent  and 
practice  of  nations  in  a  low  stage  of  civilization.  Approved  writers  even 
lay  it  down  as  a  principle,  that  that  state  involves  all  the  issues  of  property, 
liberty,  and  life,  and  this  for  both  sexes,  and  all  ages ;  and  that  all  limita- 
tions of  rights  of  conquest  are  but  so  many  departures  from  the  strictness 
of  the  relation  of  hostility.  See  Grotius,  "  Rights  of  War  and  Peace," 
lib.  3,  cap.  4,  §  5,  6,  9-  12  ;  cap.  5,  §  1 ;  cap.  7,  §  1-3.  Nor  does  even 
civilization,  without  religion,  do  much  to  promote,  in  this  particular,  the 
objects  of  humanity.  The  history  of  the  Roman  wars,  even  under  the 
high  cultivation  of  the  empire,  is  no  more  consonant  with  the  feelings  of 
a  reader  of  the  present  day,  particularly  in  respect  to  the  treatment  of 
prisoners,  than  that  of  the  wars  of  Canaan.  A  course  taken,  by  tlie  Greeks, 
with  their  Trojan  prisoners,  similar  to  what  we  are  now  considering,  furnishes 
the  plot  of  the  "  Troades"  of  Euripides.  For  the  practices  of  war  in  the 
Old  Testament  times  generally,  see  e.  g.  Judges  i.  7 ;  viii.  7, 16,  18  -21 ; 
XX.  43-48;  1  Sam.  xi.  2 ;  2  Kings  viii.  12;  Amos  i.  3-13.  Some 'of 
these  instances  relate  to  tlie  Israelites  themselves;  but  probably  no" one 
supposes,  that  (after  the  time  of  Moses,  at  least)  their  customs  were  more 
sanguinary  than  those  of  their  neighbours ;  and,  if  any  one  did  so  sup- 
pose, the  other  instances,  in  the  texts  quoted,  would  refute  him. 

f  Judges  vi.  -  viii. 


XVII.]  NUMBERS   XXVIIl.   1.  — XXXVI.    V.i.  405 

thousand  only  from  each  tribe),  that  nothing  was  in- 
tended beyond  a  sudden  inroad  on  a  lew  exposed 
neighbouring  settlements,  to  the  end  of  deterring  the 
Midianites,  by  a  seasonable  exhibition  of  energy,  from 
repeating  their  late  treacherous  attempt,  at  the  same 
time  that  by  substituting  a  mutual  antipathy,  in  the 
place  of  the  recent  dangerous  friendship,  it  should  ac- 
complish the  same  end  by  putting  the  Israelites  for  the 
future  out  of  the  way  of  such  a  pernicious  influence.*" 
From  the  fact  that  the  returning  party  represented 
themselves  to  have  sustained  no  loss,t  it  is  probable, 
further,  that  they  did  riot  engage  Midianites  enough,  to 
make  any  organized  resistance. 

Who  were,  then,  "  all  the  males,"  whom  they 
"  slew  "  ?  t  Certainly  not  all  the  males  of  the  nation ; 
for  the  nation  survived  in  great  power.  I  understand 
the  record  to  declare,  that  they  slew  all  the  males 
who  fell  in  their  way ;  and  how  many  these  were,  is  a 
question  which  we  have  no  means  of  determining. 
The  class  of  captives,  who  were  preserved  alive,  are 
said  indeed  to  have  amounted  to  thirty-two  thousand ; 
and  this  statement  might  seem  at  first  view  to  afford 
the  basis  of  a  calculation.  But  I  have  repeatedly  had 
occasion  to  observe,  that  numbers  make  the  most  sus- 
picious part  of  the  text,  and,  in  the  present  instance,  I 
think  that  there  need  be  litde  hesitation  in  saying,  that 
the  text  has  suffered  violence ;  for,  supposing  each  of  the 
two  classes  of  prisoners  put  to  death  to  have  been  as 
numerous  as  that  preserved,  an  easy  calculation  will 
show,  that  each  warrior,  on  his  return  from  the  expedi- 
tion, must  have  come  burdened  with  the  care  of  eight 
persons,  and  more  than  sixty-seven  animals;  a  view  which 

*  Compare  Numb.  xxv.  1-3.  f  xxxi.  49. 

X  xxxi.  7. 


406  NUMBERS  XXVIll.   l.-XA'XVI.   13.  [LECT. 

it  seems  impossible  to  suppose  was  originally  presented 
either  by  a  true  historian  or  a  forger.* 

Besides  the  slaying  of  the  Midianitish  warriors,  more 
or  fewer,  the  other  forms  of  severity  which  the  passage 
under  examination  records,  are  the  putting  to  death  of  the 
male  children  and  the  adult  females  among  the  prison- 
ers, and  the  reduction  of  the  female  children  to  cap- 
tivity. Pained,  as  much  as  other  readers,  by  the  recital 
of  such  horrors,  and  rejoicing  most  gratefully,  that,  in 
so  large  a  portion  of  the  world,  they  have  now  passed 
away  from  among  the  practices  of  war,  I  yet  cannot  but 
think,  that  the  principles  above  developed  supply  a 
vindication  of  such  (the  then  existing  circumstances 
considered)  to  any  mind,  which  admits  the  general 
lawfulness  of  appealing,  in  emergencies  of  a  state,  to 
the  last  resort  of  kings.  I  trust,  that  there  is  to  be 
hereafter  a  state  of  society,  in  which  it  will  be  no  longer 
needful  for  the  public  security  to  take  a  murderer's 
life.  But,  believing  that  that  state  of  things  has  not  yet 
arrived,  I  hold  the  public  officer,  who  is  the  instrument 
of  a  convicted  murderer's  execution,  to  be  doing  his 
duty;  to  be  doing,  in  other  words,  God's  will,  which 
has  respect  to  existing  circumstances.  So,  looking  back 
upon  a  remote,  unformed  age  of  human  history,  I  find 
myself  compelled  to  allow,  that  the  necessities  of  the 
world's  government  then  involved  the  use  of  a  much 

*  A  glance  at  the  following  table,  which  exhibits  the  Hebrew  numeri- 
cal notation  by  means  of  letters,  will  show  how  easily  copyists  might  fall 
into  errors  in  respect  to  figures,  whenever  anciently  this  literal  notation 
was  employed,  or  one  using  the  same  elements. 


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

7 

8 

9 

Units 

K 

3 

i 

T 

n 

1  * 

T 

n 

a 

Tens 

1 

3 

S 

D 

J 

D 

V 

a 

V 

Hundreds 

P 

1 

t£^ 

n 

1 

D 

I 

T 

V 

Thousands 

1 

1 
3 

1 

1 
n 

1 
n 

1 
1 

1 

T 

1 
n 

1 

r 


XVII.]  NUMBERS  XXVIII.   1.  — XXXVI.  13.  407 

harsher  instrumentality  than  now  is  requisite ;  and,  pain- 
ful as  is  that  observation,  I  find  it  impossible  not  to 
acquiesce  in  the  equity,  for  the  time  bemg,  of  what  the 
exigencies  of  the  time  enforced. 

I  have  treated  this  question  on  its  general  principles ; 
and  if  I  have  shown,  that,  in  the  existing  circumstances, 
it  was  right  for  measures  to  be  adopted,  from  which  our 
feelings  revolt,  and  which  in  us,  in  altered  circumstan- 
ces, would  be  criminal  in  a  high  degree,  I  have  shown 
also,  that  it  is  consistent  with  our  views  of  the  benevo- 
lent attributes  of  God,  to  suppose,  that  under  those 
circumstances  he  should  command  those  measures. 
God's  will,  respecting  the  action  of  his  children,  will 
always  have  reference  to  the  conditions  under  which  they 
are  acting ;  so  as  to  make  that  his  pleasure  at  one  time, 
concerning  them,  which  would  not  be  so  at  another. 
If  we  have"  not  satisfied  ourselves,  that,  at  the  present 
time,  we  ought  to  slay  the  malicious  manslayer,  we  must 
by  no  means  do  it.  If  we  have  so  satisfied  ourselves, 
this  is  but  saying,  in  other  words,  that  we  have  become 
persuaded,  that  such  is  God's  will.  So,  if  we  have 
seen  reason  to  beUeve,  that  it  was  right  for  Moses,  under 
the  circumstances,  to  do  as  he  did,  we  have  equally  be- 
come convinced,  that  God's  will  was  to  have  him  thus 
proceed ;  and,  if  such  was  God's  will,  then  there  remains 
no  difficulty  in  supposmg,  that  he  made  it  known  by  the 
revelation  of  a  direct  command.  It  will  be  seen,  there- 
fore, that  I  do  not  care  to  lay  any  stress  upon  the  fact, 
—  of  which,  however,  I  ought  not  to  omit  all  notice,  — 
that  Moses  nowhere  recites  or  refers  to  a  divine  com- 
mand for  his  particular  manner  of  procedure  at  this 
time.  Preferring  to  rest  upon  the  principles  which  I 
have  exhibited,  I  will  not,  at  present,  propose  any  ap- 
plication of  views,  which  might  be  suggested  by  the 
supposition  of  an  unrestrained  discretion,  and  conse- 


408  NUMBERS  XXVIII.   1.  — XXXVI.   13.  [LECT. 

quent  individual  responsibility  of  Moses,  in  the  present 
case. 

I  have  represented  Moses'  course  as  designed  to 
operate,  in  terrorem,  with  a  view  to  future  security.  He 
does  not  appear  to  have  had  satisfaction  in  his  task.  On 
the  contrary,  he  is  related  to  have  been  strongly  excited 
when  he  saw  the  array  of  prisoners,  and  to  have  uttered 
a  rebuke,  which  shows,  that  he  would  far  rather  that 
whatever  severity  needed  to  be  exercised,  .should  have 
been  finished  in  the  furious  haste  of  onset,  than  that  it 
should  be  left,  as  it  was,  for  his  execution  in  cold  blood.* 
As  it  was,  however,  the  prisoners  were  now^  upon  his 
hands;  and  it  was  unavoidable  for  him  to  dispose  of 
them,  according  as  the  recent  hazards,  and  the  present 
posture  of  the  state,  demanded. 

What  should  be  done  with  them^  Should  they  be 
sent  home  unharmed,  or  should  they  be  welcomed,  on 
an  equal  footing,  to  the  hospitality  of  Israel  ?  Then,  if 
the  views  above  presented  are  sound,  the  war  would 
better  not  have  been  undertaken  ;  not  to  say  that,  in  the 
latter  case,  the  now  youthful  sons  of  the  Midianitish 
warriors  would  presently  have  grown  up  to  be  a  sword 
at  the  bosom  of  the  still  feeble  state,  and  possibly  to 
compel  the  hazards  and  the  hardships  of  another  con- 
test, while,  as  to  the  adults  of  the  other  sex,  it  was,  on 
the  one  hand,  their  wicked  instrumentality,  which  had 
created  the  occasion  for  the  recent  war,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  danger  from  them,  if  allowed  to  be  in  a 
condition  to  try  again  their  seductive  arts  upon  the  Isra- 
elites, had  just  been  proved  to  be  such  as  the  state 
could  by  no  means  tolerate.f     The  assertion  that  it  was 

*  Numb.  xxxi.  14  - 16.  . 

t  Moses'  renewed  solicitude  upon  this  point  appears  to  have  been  ex- 
treme. Compare  Numb.  xxxi.  15,  16.  He  seems  to  have  thoug'ht,  that, 
if  the  ruinously  depraving  intercourse  with  these  idolatrous  wantons  had 


XVII.]  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  409 

for  guilty  purposes,  that  the  remaining  description  of 
prisoners  was  preserved  alive,  is  destitute  of  all  authori- 
ty from  the  narrative.  The  distinction  made  in  respect 
to  them  was  a  distinction  of  mercy,  rendered,  possible 
and  fit  by  the  circumstance,  that  their  preservation 
would  not  be  attended  with  the  same  perils  as  the 
preservation  of  the  others.  The  exigency  demanded 
victims,  but  it  admitted  of  a  selection.  The  selection 
exempted  those,  from  whom  danger  of  internal  strife 
and  of  moral  corruption  needed  not  to  be  apprehended ; 
since  by  them  the  lascivious  arts  of  their  elders  had 
not  yet  been  learned,  and  they  might  be  bred  in  purer 
habits,  and  a  faith  which  would  not  demoralize.  Cir- 
cumstances thus  admitting  of  their  being  spared,  they 
were  spared;  —  for  servitude,  doubtless,  because  they 
were  captives,  and,  according  to  all  the  notions  and 
usages  of  the  age,  such  was  a  captive's  doom ;  —  but 
still  for  servitude  among  a  people,  whose  laws  were 
tender  of  the  slave,  and  with  whom,  should  they  enter 
into  domestic  relations,  more  or  less  honorable,  they 
received  a  treatment,  which,  compared  with  established 
customs  of  the  time,  had  a  certain  delicacy  and  forbear- 
ance, and  became  invested  with  privileges  of  elsewhere 
unprecedented  liberality.* 

not  been  repeated,  they  had  at  least  been  spared  by  the  army  with  a  view 
to  it.  And  I  add,  that  his  question  (15)  is  naturally  understood  to  imply, 
that  the  sparing  of  prisoners  (at  least  when  taken  under  exasperating^ 
circumstances)  was  a  departure  from  the  common  usages  of  war. 

*  Compare  Deut.  xxi.  10-14. —  Suggestions  made  in  previous  parts 
of  this  volume,  respecting  the  character  of  education  (whether  education 
of  an  individual  or  of  communities)  as  being  a  process,  and  not  an  instant 
result,  and  therefore  having  reference  to  the  present  condition  of  its  sub- 
ject, and  not  always  admitting  of  the  application  of  the  best  rule  in  the 
first  instance,  have  an  obvious  bearing  upon  this  question,  which  I  do  not 

,  stop  to  follow  out.  —  "Moses  sent Phinehas,  the  son  of  Eleazar 

tjhe  priest,  to  the  war,  with  the  hob/,  instruments,  and  the  trumpets  "  (xxxi. 
6).  Le  Clerc,  whom  Dathe  and  otliers  follow,  understands  here,  (correctly 
as  1  think,)  a  hendiadys,  tlie  trumpets  being  themselves  the  holy  instru- 

voL.  I.  52 


410  NUMBERS   XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  [LECT. 

The  war  with  the  Midianites  gave  occasion  to  Moses 
to  establish,  before  his  death,  the  laws  which  were 
thenceforward  to  regulate  the  division  of  spoil  obtained 
in  military  expeditions.  The  rule  of  distribution  was, 
that  those  who  had  borne  arms  should  divide  one  half 
among  themselves,  after  setting  aside  one  ^ve-hundredth 
part  of  their  portion  for  the  priests,  while  the  other  half 
should  go  to  the  rest  of  the  people,  and  be  chargeable 
with  one  fiftieth  part  for  the  Levites.  This  arrange- 
ment would  operate  as  a  liberal  bounty  upon  enhst- 
ments ;  since,  except  in  the  improbable  case  of  an 
army's  numbering  a  large  part  of  the  nation,  those  who 
took  the  field  would  individually  obtain  thereby  a  much 
greater  share  of  booty,  and  be  liable  to  a  much  less 
deduction  for  the  sacred  treasury.  It  would  tend  to 
excite  the  courage  of  the  soldiers,  since,  the  fewer  they 
were,  provided  they  conquered,  the  richer  would  be 
the  spoil  of  each ;  while  the  portion,  required  to  be  re- 
served for  the  priests  and  Levites,  reminded  them  of 
the  religious  gratitude  which  they  owed  to  the  Provi- 
dence that  had  given  them  success.  From  the  fact,  that 
the  officers  presented  a  voluntary  offering,  at  the  sanc- 
tuary, of  their  booty  consisting  of  lighter  articles,  it  is 

ments  intended.  Compare  x.  9.  Alii,  alias.  —  "  Five  kings  of  Midian  " 
(8) ;  that  is,  lieutenants,  procurators,  of  some  degree.  Compare  Joshua 
xiii.  21.  From  the  same  verse  it  appears,  that  Balaam  (compare  Numb, 
xxiv.  25)  had  either  stopped,  on  his  way  homeward,  at  tlie  western  Midian- 
itish  settlements,  or  else  that  he  had  returned  to  them.  —  The  occasion  for 
the  purification  enjoined  in  19,  20,  is  stated  to  be  the  recent  contact  of  the 
soldiers  with  bodies  of  the  slain.  Compare  xix.  and  p.  363.  The  direc- 
tion to  remain  meanwhile  "  without  the  camp,"  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a 
revival  of  the  earlier  law  in  v.  1  -  4.  As  the  persons  to  be  purified,  in 
this  instance,  had  not  yet  entered  the  camp,  mere  convenience  dictated 
that  they  should  not,  till  they  had  gone  through  their  purgation  together. 
"  Captives"  (19)  needed  to  be  purified;  else  their  touch  would  defile. — 
The  spirit  of  the  new  direction  in  22,  23,  apparently  is,  that  whatever 
had  belonged  to  idolaters,  if  preserved,  required  to  be  made  pure,  as  far 
as  possible,  by  a  peculiar  lustration. 


XVII.]  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVl.  18.  411 

to  be  inferred,  that  this  was  admitted  to  belong  to  him 
into  whose  hands  it  fell ;  the  law  being  scrupulous  not 
to  create  a  temptation  to  fraud,  by  instituting  a  demand, 
for  what  might  so  easily  be  concealed,  in  behalf  of  the 
national  treasury.* 

In  the  thirty -second  chapter,  we  read,  that  the  tribes 
of  Reuben  and  Gad,  and  half  of  that  of  Manasseh, 
finding  the  lately  conquered  districts  of  Bashan  and  the 
Amorites  on  the  east  of  Jordan  to  be  favorable  to  theil* 
occupation  as  graziers,  applied  to  Moses  for  his  consent 
to  occupy  it  as  their  territory  ;  which  consent  they  ob- 
tained, havmg  first  stipulated,  that,  after  estabhshing  their 
families,  they  would  accompany  the  other  tribes  in  the 
invasion  of  Canaan,  and  not  abandon  them  till  posses- 
sion should  be  taken  of  that  country.  I  make  no  further 
remark  upon  this  passage,. except  that  the  stern  vehe- 
mence with  which  Moses  repels  the  first  pi:oposal  of 
the  tribes,  and  his  suspicion  of  treacherous  designs, 
apparently  beyond  what  was  required  by  the  occasion, 
are  perhaps  to  be  taken  as  indications  of  that  state  of 
his  mind  at  the  present  period,  on  which  I  remarked  in 
connexion  with  the  miracle  at  Meribah.f 

The  next  passage  contains  a  Hst  of  successive  stages 
travelled  between  the  Exodus  and  the  invasion,  which 
Moses,  drawing  near  to  his  end,  took  care  to  leave  in  a 
form  to  be  preserved.  Most  of  the  names,  contained 
in  it,  have  no  meaning  for  the  modern  geographer. 
Several  spots,  however,  indicated  by  them,  and  those 

*  Numb.  xxxi.  25-54.  —  It  is  difficult  not  to  recognise,  in  32-46,  an 
inventory  and  calculation  made  at  the  time.  In  a  later  age  there  would 
hardly  be  interest  enough  in  such  details,  to  lead  to  such  a  record  of  them. 

f  With  xxxii.  6-15,  compare  p.  375.  The  readiness  to  be  soothed 
(20-24),  as  much  as  the  previous  irritation,  betrays  a  senile  flexibility  of 
mood  ;  and  the  tender  deference,  with  which,  after  his  outbreak,  Moses  is 
addressed  by  the  suitors  (16-19,  25-27,  31,  32),  is  worthy  of  remark  in 
the  same  connexion. 


412  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  [LECT. 

of  the  greatest  interest,  we  are  still  able   to  identify, 
either  absolutely,  or  with  a  high  degree  of  probability. 

Rameses,  the  place  of  rendezvous  and  departure, 
has  been  thought,  on  what  seem  to  me  good  grounds, 
to  have  been  the  capital  of  the  district  of  Goshen,  and 
to  have  been  situated  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  east- 
ern mouth  of  the  Nile.*  Succoth,  the  first  stopping- 
place,  was  very '  probably  no  established  post,  but  took 
its  name,  which  means  booths,  from  the  circumstance 
of  the  Israelites  erecting  there  a  temporary  shelter ; 
in  respect  to  Etham,  we  have  to  be  content  with  the 
description,  that  it  was  "in  the  edge  of  the  wilderness," 
close  to  the  extreme  limit  of  the  de^nsely  injiabited 
country  ;t  nor  of  the  three  places  next  named,  Pi- 
hahiroth,  Baal-zephon,  and  Migdol,  can  we  say  any 
more,  than  that  they  were  passed  in  the  way  to  that 
spot,  wh^re  was  effected  the  miraculous  passage  of  the 
Red  Sea.     This,  the  best  modern  writers  (particularly 

*  Numb,  xxxiii.  3.  Compare  Ex.  i.  11;  xii.  37;  Gen.  xlvii.  11.  The 
question,  according  to  the  present  state  of  the  controversy,  lies  between 
a  village  near  Alexandria,  which  Niebuhr  found  to  bear  the  name  of 
Mamsis,  and  &.  spot,  east  of  the  Delta  of  the  Nile,  where  extensive  ruins 
of  some  ancient  city  have  been  thought  to  mark  the  ancient  capital  of 
Goshen.  If  the  whole  of  the  first  half  of  verse  3  is  genuine,  it  would 
seem  to  require  the  inference,  that  Rameses  was  near  the  seat  of  the 
royal  court,  which  was  the  fact,  provided  it  was  at  or  near  the  place  last 
specified,  and  provided  the  royal  residence  was  now  at  Zoan,  (Numb.  xiii. 
22;  Ps.  Ixxviii.  12,43;  Is.  xix.  11-13;  xxx.  4,)  which  there  are  strong 
reasons  for  believing.  See  Stuart's  "  Course  of  Hebrew  Study,"  Vol.  II., 
Excurs.  1.  See  also,  Gesenius,  "  Lexicon,"  ad  Verb.  Dp??;?'^ .  The  Sep- 
tuagint  translators,  in  Gen.  xlvi.  28,  have  rendered  |C?J  by  'P«^a<r«-?.  — 
As  to  the  expression,  ^they  departed  from  Rameses,  in  the  first  month,  on 
the  fifteenth  day "  &c.  (3),  it  is  very  properly  understood,  they  began  to 
depart,  &c.  The  Israelites,  who  were  already  at  that  place,  knowing 
what  had  previously  occurred,  were  prepared  to  proceed  on  the  march, 
on  the  morning  after  the  death  of  the  first-born.  Others,  whose  home 
was  elsewhere,  departed  from  Rameses,  as  fast  as  they  could  assemble 
there.  —  "The  Egyptians  buried "  &c.  (4);  ratlier,  were  buryiTig,  Si-c,  so 
that  they  gave  the  retiring  Israelites  no  disturbance. 

\  Numb,  xxxiii,  6.    Compare  Ex.  xiii.  20. 


XVII.]  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  413 

since  Niebuhr's  observations)  incline  to  place  a  little 
above  the  city  of  Suez,  at  the  northern  extremity  of  the 
gulf  of  that  name,  where  the  breadth  of  the  strait  is 
now  about  three  thousand  five  hundred  feet.*  n# 

A  march  of  three  days,  after  the  passage  of  the 
Red  Sea,  through  "the  wilderness  of  Shur,"  where 
they  "found  no  water,"  brought  the  IsraeUtes  (moving 
slowly,  of  course,  from  their  numbers)  to  Marah,  so 
named  from  its  bitter  spring.  Burckhardt,  on  his  W2^ 
from  Suez  to  Mount  Sinai,  after  passing  over  a  tract  of 
sand  and  stone,  came,  on  the  second  day,  to  water, 
which  he  describes  as  being  "so  bitter,  that  men  can- 
not drink  it ;  and  even  camels,  if  not  very  thirsty,  re- 
fuse to  taste  it."  The  next  stage  was  to  Elim,  where 
were  "  twelve  fountains  of  water,  and  three-score  and 
ten  palm-trees";  and  the  same  traveller,  three  hours 
after  leaving  what  he  supposes  to  have  been  the  ancient 
Marah,  came  to  a  spot  abounding  ip  water,  and  the 
same  kind  of  vegetation.f  The  next  encampments,  as 
they  proceeded  southerly  along  the  eastern  edge  of  the 
Gulf  of  Suez,  were  "  by  the  Red  Sea,"  (of  which  that 
gulf,  it  will  be  remembered,  is  the  northwestern  arm,) 
and  "  in  the  wilderness  of  Sin " ;  descriptions  too  in- 
definite to  afford  any  means  of  identifying  the  spots ; 
nor  have  we  Etfiy  information  concerning  Doplikah, 
Alush,  and  Rephidim,  except  that  a  monkish  tradition 
designates  the  position  of  this  latter  place,  where  "  there 
was  no  water  for  the  people  to  drink,"  fixing  it,  as  the 
circumstances  dictate,  a  little  to  the  west  of  Sinai, 
whither  the   host  next  proceeded,  and  where  it  was 

*  Numb,  xxxiii.  7,  8.  Compare  Ex.  xiv.  2  et  seq.  See  Rosemniiller 
ad  loc.  poster.  Le  Clerc,  "  Dissertatio  de  Maris  Idumtei  Trajectione,"  §  2. 
Stuart's  "  Course  of  Hebrew  Study,"  Vol.  XL,  Excurs.  4. 

t  xxxiii.  9.  Compare  Ex.  xv.  22,  23,  27.  See  Burckhardt's  "Travels" 
&c.,  pp.  472-474. 


414  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1— XXXVI.  13.  [LECT. 

arrested  nearly  a  year,  to  receive  the  Law,  prepare  the 
Tabernacle,  and,  in  short,  form  itself  into  a  body  politic. 
The  descriptionsi  which  travellers  give  of  that  region, 
show  the  fitness  of  its  selection  for  such  a  purpose ;  its 
awfully  grand  scenery  being  suited  to  impress  the  minds 
of  such  especially  as  had  been  used  only  to  the  tame- 
ness  of  the  flat,  alluvial  country  of  Egypt,  while  the 
exuberant  fertility  of  its  valleys  afibrded  the  needed 
supplies** 

Leaving  Sinaa,  on  its  vinarch  northward  towards  the 
southern  frontier  of  Canaan,* the  ho§t  halted  at  places, 
to  one  of  which  the  commemorative  name  of  Kibroth- 
hattaavah  was  given,  while  the  others  bore  the  name  of 
Hazeroth,  or  hamlets.^  Thence,  we  are  told  in  a  pre- 
vious part  of  this  book,  it  "  removed  and  pitched  in  the 
wilderness  of  Paran";t  from  Paran,  (the  position  of 
which  is  fixed  by  the  whole  context,  and  particularly 
by  the  mention  of  Hebron  and  Kadesh-Bamea,§  as 
lying  on  the  southern  border  of  Canaan,)  they  sent 
spies  to  explore  that  .region;  and  subsequently  turned 
back  into  the  open  country  for  their  wandermgs  of 
many  years,  ||  at  the  end  of  which,  they  reappear  at 
Kadesh.H  The  passage  now  before  us  does  not  men- 
tion "the  wilderness  of  Paran,"  its  object  being  a  more 
precise  specification  of  the  places  of  encampment ;  but 
one  or  more  of  the  eighteen  names,  recited  in  it,  be- 
tween Hazeroth  and  Kadesh  (to  which  it  also  declares 
the  host  to  have  returned**),  are  doubtless  to  be  under- 
stood as  lying  within  the  territory  of  Paran,  while  the 

*   Numb,  xxxiii.  10-15.     Compare  Ex.  xvi.  1;  xvii.  1;  xix.  1,  2. 
See  Burckhardt's  "Travels"  &c.,  pp.  572-574. 
f  Numb,  xxxiii.  16, 17.    Compare  xi.  34,  35.  J  xii.  1& 

§  xiii.  22,  26.    Compare  17  ;  also  21  with  xxxiii.  36,  xxxiv.  3,  4. 
II  xiv.  25.  If  XX.  1. 

••  xxxiii.  18-36.     Compare  xii.  16;  xx.  1. 


XVII.]  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  416 

rest,  (with  the  exception  of  Ezion-Gaber,*  a  well- 
known  haven  at  the  northern  extremity  of  the  Elanitic 
gulf,)  can  now  no  longer  be  identified.  The  march 
from  Kadesh  to  Mount  Hor  is  related  as  in  the  pre- 
vious passage,!  along  with  a  brief  notice  of  the  death 
of  Aaron  at  the  latter  place,t  and  a  hint  at  the  attack 
sustained  in  its  neighbourhood  from  the  southern  Canaan- 
ites ;  §  and  thence  the  hst  of  removals  proceeds,  (with 
a  minute  enumeration,  where  it  had  not  been  already 
given,  II )  as  far  as  to  the  encampment  of  the  host  "  in 

*  Numb*,  xxxiii.  35.  —  If  the  genuineness  of  Deut  x.  6,  7,  be  allowed, 
(respecting*  which  see  my  note  ad  loc.,)  the  position  of  Mosera  also 
(Numb,  xxxiii.  30)  is  ascertained  as  being  part,  or  in  the  vicinity,  of 
Mount  Hor.  A  question  Hi  also  arise  on  a  comparison  of  those  verses 
with  xxxiii.  31  -33,  and  of  Deut.  ii.  8,  with  Numb,  xxxiii.  35.  —  xxxiiL  36 
is  alone  sufficient  to  prove,  what  could  be  abundantly  shown  from  other 
sources,  that  this  list  (and  the  same  is  true  of  other  memoranda  of  the 
kind)  is  not  intended  to  include  all  the  stopping-places;  since  the  distance 
from  Ezion-Gaber  to  Kadesh  was  not  less  than  a  hundred  miles.  I  sub- 
mit the  conjecture,  that,  unless  there  was  intended  to  be  a  rest  of  a  day 
or  more,  (so  as  to  admit  of  sacrifices  being  offered,)  the  Tabernacle  was 
not  set  up,  and  then  no  record  of  the  halt  was  made. 

t  xxxiii.  .. .     Compare  xx.  22. 

I  xxxiiL  38,  39.     Compare  xx.  23-29. 
§  xxxiii.  to.     Con'  are  xxi.  1. 

II  The  list  in  xxxiii.  41  -44,  only  differs  from  the  previous  one,  (com- 
pare xxi.  4,  10,  11,)  in  inserting  two  names  of  stopping-places,  Zalmonah 
and  Punon,  between  Mount  Hor  and  Oboth.  "  From  Oboth  they  journey- 
ed," say  both  accounts,  (xxi.  11,  xxxiii.  44,)  "  and  pitched  at  Ije-abarim,  in 
the  border  of  Moab."  **Iim,"  in  xxxiii.  45,  is  but  an  abbreviation  of 
Ije-abariin;  but  previous  to  the  arrival  at  "the  mountains  of  Abarim, 
before  Nebo,"  (xxxiii.  47,)  in  other  words,  "the  top  of  Pisgah,"  (xxi.  20, 
compare  xxvii.  12;  Deut.  xxxii.  49;  xxxiv.  1,)  four  names  (besides  "the 
valley  of  Zared,"  and  « the  other  side  of  Arnon,"  which  are  indefinite) 
occur  in  the  one  list,  (Numb.  xxi.  1(3, 18, 19,)  which  differ  from  the  two  names, 
corresponding  to  them,  in  the  other.  It  is  likely,  that,  these  removals  being 
recent,  when  both  records  were  made,  the  latter  record  in  this  instance 
only  filled  up  two  chasms  in  the  former.  From  xxi.  20,  and  xxxiii.  47,  I 
gather,  that  the  Israelites  took  care  early  to  gain  the  hilly  country, 
whence,  in  greater  security,  they  could  make  their  first  observations  and 
arrangements;  and  that,  these  made,  they  descended  into  the  plain,  (xxii. 
1,  xxxiii.  48,)  where  Balaam  reconnoitred  their  camp  (xxiii.  9,  xxiv.  2).  — 
If,  as  Josephus  understood,  (Antiq.,  lib.  5,  cap.  1,  §  1 ;  BelL  Jud.,  lib.  4,  cap. 


416  NUMBERS  XXVin.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  [LECT. 

the  plains  of  Moab,  by  Jordan,  near  Jericho,"  the  scene 
of  the  transactions  of  which  we  have  been  reading  in 
the  eleven  next  preceding  chapters,  and  of  all  that  fol- 
lows of  the  history  recorded  in  the  Pentateuch. 

In  what  remains  of  this  chapter,  we  read  of  a  direc- 
tion given  to  Moses,  to  expel  the  Canaanites,  when 
possession  should  be  taken  of  their  country,  and  destroy 
all  the  instruments  and  monuments  of  their  idolatrous 
worship.  Upon  this  I  make,  at  present,  no  further  re- 
mark, than  that  the  divine  command,  as  far  as  it  respects 
the  persons  of  the  Canaanites,  enjoins  their  expulsion, 
and  nothing  more.  There  is  nothing;  said  as  yet  of 
extermination,  whatever  may  be  said  elsevthere.* 

At  this  period,  to  keep  the  Israelites,  when  they 
should  have  passed  into  Canaan,  within  the  limits  which 
they  might  rightfully  claim,  and  arrest  that  love  of  ex- 
tended conquest,  which  success  might  engender,  Moses 
receives  a  distinct  statement  of  the  boundaries  of  the 
promised  land,  which  is  transmitted  to  us  in  the  next 
following  chapter.  Taking  its  departure,  at  the  east, 
from  the  lower  extremity  of  the  Dead  Sea,  the  southern 

7,  §  6,)  Abel-Shittim  (compare  Numb.  xxv.  1,  xxxiii.  49)  was  the  ^bila  of 
his  time,  it  lay  seven  or  eight  miles  east  from  the  Jordan,  opposite  to 
Jericho,  and  Beth-jesimoth  (xxxiii.  49 ;  compare  Josh.  xii.  3,  xiii.  20,) 
was  near  it.  ,    , 

*  I  do  not  go  so  far  as  to  urge,  that  th0  terms  of  the  precept,  "  Ye  shall 
drive  out"  Sic.  distinctly  convey  an  implication  of  an  opposite  character ; 
because  possibly  the  Hiphil  of  iff'yi ,  wjth  tlie  accusative  of  tlie  person, 
may  be  used  in  the  sense  of  dispossessing  of  life,  though  Ex.  xv.  9,  proves 
nothing  of  the  kind,  nor  can  it  be  clearly  made  out  from  Numb.  xiv.  12, 
where  the  "disinheriting"  may  well  be  regarded  as  one  thing,  and  the 
"smiting  with  the  pestilence,"  which  accompanies  it,  another.  —  For  views 
of  Moses'  plan  concerning  the  conduct  of  the  war  in  Canaan,  see  my 
remarks  on  Deut.  vii.  1-5.  —  With  54,  which  is  here  merely  intro- 
duced in  natural  connexion  with  53,  compare  Numb.  xxvi.  53-56.  —  "If 
ye  will  not  drive  out"  &c.  (55,  56) ;  if  ye  allow  the  Canaanites,  with  their  • 
false  and  depraving  faith  and  practices,  to  remain  among  you,  the  sources 
of  your  prosperity  will  be  sapped ;  you  wUl  but  bring  on  yourselves 
eventQalljr  a  national  ruin,  like  what  has  been  denounced  against  them. 


XVII.]  NUMBERS   XXVIII.   1.  — XXXVI.   13.  417 

line  was  to  run  westerly  along  "  the  desert  of  Zin,"  * 
and  then,  following  the  course  of  "  the  river  of  Egypt," 
to  have  its  "goings  out"  at  "the  sea";t  that  is,  to 
terminate  at  the  Mediterranean,  which  was  to  make  the 
"west  border"  of  the  country  in  its  whole  extent4 
The  termini  of  the  northern  line,  which  was  to  begin 
westward  on  the  sea-coast,  at  an'  elevation  called  Mount 
Hor,  and  run  easterly  to  the  point  of  its  "  goings  out "  at 
Hazar-Enan,  cannot  now  be  identified ;  ^  and  the  same 
is  true  of  land-marks  mentioned  in  connexion  with  the 
eastern  boundary,  though  this,  it  is  plain,  was  to  be 
made  by  the  Jordan, ||  the  Sea  of  Chinnereth  (or  Gen- 
nesaret),  and  the.  Dead  Sea.ir  The  Reubenites  and 
Gadites,  with  half  of  the  tribe  of  Manasseh,  are  assured 
again,  according  to  the  arrangement  lately  made,  of 
permission  to  have  their  settlements  out  of  the  region 
of  Palestine  proper ;  **  and,  to  make  the  division  of 
Canaan  satisfactory,  twelve  men,  a  prince  from  each 
tribe,  are  divinely  designalted  to  superintend  it.ft 

*  Numb,  xxxiv.  3,  4.  —  The  "  desert  of  Zin  "  was,  as  we  have  seen 
before  (xiii.  21,  26,  xx.  1),  the  northeastern  portion  of  "  the  wilderness 
of  Paran"  (x.  12,  xiii.  3,  26),  which  name  appears  to  have  "represented 
the  whole  wild  country  between  Palestine  to  tlie  north,  the  peninsula  of 
Sinai  to  tlie  south,  "  El  Ghor  "  to  the  east,  and  the  confines  of  Egypt  to 
the  west. 

t  xxxiv.  5.  —  The  "river  of  Egypt,''  (compare  Josh.xV.  4;  2  Chron.  vii. 
8,)  sometimes  called  the  "river  of  the  wilderness,"  (Amos  vi.  14,)  has 
been  thought  to  be  the  same  with  "  the  brook  Besor,"  (1  Sam.  xxx.  9,  10, 
21,)  a  little  stream  which  empties  into  the  Mediterranean  near  Gaza. 
Other  maps  lay  it  down  about  thirty  miles  furtlier  south.  (See  Carpen- 
ter's "Geography"  &,c.,  §  85.);  while  some  commentators  understand 
the  Nfle. 

f  Numb,  x.xxiv.  6.  §  xxxiv.  7-9. 

II  Probably  the  Septuagint  and  other  versions  are  right  in  translating 
Ain,  (|X,  xxxiv.  11,  which,  in  one  of  its  meanings  is  well,  fountain,)  in- 
stead of  regarding  it  as  a  proper  name.  It  then  denotes  the  source  of 
Jordan.  But  the  eastern  boundary  began  further  north,  as  is  shown  by 
the  words  next  preceding. 

H  xxxiv.  10-12.  **  xxxiv.  13-15.    Compare  xxxii. 

tt  xxxiv.  16-29.  —  The  arrangement  here,  appearing  to  indicate  the 

VOL.  I.  63 


418  NUMBERS  XXVIII.   1— XXXVI.   13.  [LECT. 

We  have  seen  before,  that  it  was  the  intention  of  the 
Law,  that  the  Levites,  devoted  to  their  public  func- 
tions, and  endowed  with  a  competent  revenue  from  a 
public  provision,  should  possess  no  landed  property  for 
purposes  of  agriculture,  but  should  dwell  together  in 
walled  cities,  each  making  a  kind  of  iJniversity,  within 
the  precincts  of  the  several  tribes.*  The  latter  arrange- 
ment is  now  specially  prescribed.  Moses  is  directed  to 
ordain,  that,  when  the  distribution  of  territory  comes  to 
be  made,  forty-eight  cities,  each  with  a  sufficient  space 
of  suburbs  for  necessary  grazing-ground,  shall  be  as- 
signed for  the  habitations  of  the  Levites,  the  number  of 
those  cities  to  be  assessed  among  the  tribes  in  propor- 
tion to  the  extent  of  their  several  districts.!. 

Of  these  Levitical  cities,  six  are  to  have  the  character 
of  Sanctuaries,  or,  as  they  are  called,  "  cities  of  refuge  " 
-1 — — — — — 

design  of  a  deliberate  distribution,  may  be  tliought  to  confirm  my  obsen'a- 
tion  (p.  393)  on  Numb.  xxvi.  52-56.  The  list  of  princes  is  given  in  nearly 
the  same  order  in  which  the  settlements  of  the  tribes  were  afterwards 
disposed  from  south  to  north  (compare  Josh,  xv-xix) ;  a  fact  which  may 
be  thought  to  indicate,  that  the  general  arrangement  had  already  been 
determined.    But  of  this,  more,  hereafter. 

*  See  pp.  306  (note),  322,  362. 

f  Numb.  XXXV.  1-8.  Thera  has  been  much  question  respecting  the 
apparent  discrepance  between  verses  4,  5.  I  propose  to  reconcile  it  by 
simply  rendering  n';?S  "Tip  DH'in  (5),  instead  of  "ye  shall  measure  from 
without  the  city,"  ye  shall  measure  outward  for  the  city ;  that  is,  outward 
from  a  central  point.  From  this  central  point,  there  would  then  be  a 
measurement  of  two  thousand  cubits  each  way,  for  a  square,  (of  about  two 
thousand  four  hundred  yards  to  a  side,)  including  both  city  and  suburbs,  while 
the  interior  square  (with  a  side  of  half  that  length),  would  leave  suburbs  of 
the  dimension  described  in  verse  4.  I  think  the  words  wiU  well  bear  the 
sense  which  I  have  put  upon  them,  though  it  must  be  owned,  that  the 
received  translation  is  not  objectionable,  except  as  it  presents  a  discre- 
pance, where  it  is  not  natural  to  look  for  one.  Le  Clerc  ("  Commentari- 
us"  arf  loc.)  presents  a  view  according  with  this  in  the  result,  but  obtained 
by  an  interpretation  of  the  word  ^^^'p^  which  I  suppose  cannot  be  sustained ; 
and  Lowman  ("  Civil  Government  of  the  Hebrews,"  p.  109),  comes  to 
the  same  conclusion  by  another  process,  which  is  liable  to  the  same  ob- 
jection. 


XVII.]  NUMBERS  JCXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.  13.  419 

from  "  the  avenger  of  blood  " ;  a  provision,  which  brings 
to  our  view,  in  one  important  aspept,  the  relation  of 
the  next  of  kin,  as  it  existed  among  the  Hebrews. 
With  them,  that  relation  had  a  much  greater  importance 
than  belongs  to  it  among  us,  and  even  than  that  which 
is  attached  to  it  by  the  Civil  Law.  If  a  man  fell  into 
poverty,  so  as  to  betake  himself  to  servitude,  or  part 
with  his  land,  the  Law  presumed  that  his  next  relative 
would  desire  to  interpose  to  liberate  his  person,  or  dis- 
encumber his  estate,  and  invested  him  with  rights  for 
that  purpose.*  In  like  manner,  if  he  had  suffered  a 
pecuniary  wrong,  his  kinsman  succeeded  to  his  claim  to 
restitution.!  In  the  passage  before  us,  we  find  him 
exhibited  as  being  placed,  by  the  sentiments  of  the 
time,  under  an  obligation  of  mischievous  tendency, 
which  it  was  the  object  of  the  Law  to  enfeeble,  and 
eventually  to  destroy. 

It  is  a  dictate  of  nature,  for  those  to  be  each  other's 
champions,  who  are  allied  in  blood.  In  a  cultivated 
state  of  society,  great  pari  of  the  protection,  which  they 
mutually  owe,  is  assumed  by  the  law  of  the  land.  In 
a  rude  condition,  on  the  contrary,  this  championship 
naturally  takes  the  form  of  retaliation  on  the  part  of  the 
survivor  of  one  who  has  suffered  violence.  For  what 
security  they  have,  independent  of  their  personal  prow- 
ess, men  depend  in  great  part,  on  the  general  under- 
standing, that  their  death  will  not  be  unavenged ;  and 
the  urgency  of  the  case  erects  the  obligation  of  the  sur- 
viving relative  to  exact  life  for  hfe,  into  the  strictest  point 
of  honor. 

All  early  antiquity  presents  references  to  this  practice, 

*  Lev.  XXV.  25-28,  47-53.  The  conditions  on  which  either  of  these 
steps  was  to  be  taken,  are  sufficiently  explained  in  the  context  of  these 
passages,  as  treated  above,  on  pp.  304-306. 

t  Numb.  v.  8. 


420  NUMBERS   XXVIII.   1.  — XXXVI    13.  [LECT. 

as  far  as  it  has  records  to  exhibit  them  ;  and  it  is  con- 
stantly found  among  barbarous  races  at  the  present  day. 
What  is  particularly  to  our  purpose,  it  existed  anciently, 
and  exists  now,  in  full  force,  in  the  regions  near  to 
Palestine.*  The  Law  of  Moses,  finding  it  among  the 
Jews,  dealt  with  it  with  that  wisdom,  which  it  is  neces- 
sary to  use  with  an  established  point  of  honor,  against 
which  penal  inflictions  always  prove  powerless.  It 
could  no  more  be  broken  down  by ,  such  provisions, 
than  the  practice  of  duelling  at  the  present  day.  Not 
carrying  the  public  sentiment  with  them,  they  would 
fail  to  be  executed,  and  the  exposure  of  their  practical 
inefficiency  would  increase  the  motive  to  their  viola- 
tion ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  severer  they  were 
made,  the  greater  would  be  the  apparent  hazard  of 
infringing  them,  and  accordingly  the  greater  the  distinc- 
tion so  acquired.  Under  such  circumstances,  the  very 
executioner  of  the  law  would  himself  become  a  certain 
mark  for  the  "  avenger  of  blood." 

,*  Of  the  Arabs,  says  D'Arvieux,  ("Travels  in  Arabia  Deserta,"  p.  145,) 
«*  There  is  no  hatred  among  them,  but  on  account  of  blood,  and  that  is 
irreconcilable.     For  example,  if  a  man  has  killed  another,  the  friendahip 

between  their  families  and  all  their  posterity  is  broken If  they 

happen  to  be  in  some  common  interest,  or  there  is  any  match  to  propose, 
they  very  civilly  answer,  '  You  know  there  is  blood  between  us ;  it  can 
never  be  done ;  we  have  our  honor  to  preserve.^  They  never  pardon  till 
they  are  revenged."  "  Les  Persans,"  says  Chardin,  ("Voyages  en  Perse" 
&c..  Tome  III.,  p.  417,)  "  et  tous  les  autres  Mahometans,  se  conferment 
la-dessus  absolument  k  la  loi  Judaique,  remettant  k  la  fin  du  proems,  le 
meurtrier  entre  les  mains  des  plus  proches  parens  du  d^funt."  Father 
Lobo  testifies  to  the  same  practice  in  Abyssinia  ("  Voyage  to  Abyssinia" 
&c.,  p.  57).  "  If  a  man  is  unlawfully  killed,"  says  the  Koran,  (Sura  xvii. 
verse  35,)  "  we  give  to  his  nearest  relation  the  right  of  revenge."  But 
the  notion  is  by  no  means  to  be  called  Oriental. 

"  If  I  live  to  be  a  man, 

My  father's  death  revenged  shall  be," 

says  the  child  of  the  Border  Chief,  in  the  "  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel " ; 
and  there  is  no  rule  more  rigidly  observed  among  our  North  American 
Indians. 


XVII.]  NUMBERS  XXVIII.   1.  — XXXVI.  13.  421 

What  the  Law  (its  office  being  education,  not  miracu- 
lous change,)  was  incapable  of  effecting  or  promoting  by 
direct  menaces,  it  aimed  to  bring  about  by  a  course 
corresponding  with  the  opinions  and  feelings  which  pro- 
duced the  occasion  for  its  interference.  It  did  not  tell 
the  representative  of  a  slain  Jew,  that,  under  pain  of  its 
displeasure,  he  must  disgrace  himself  in  the  eyes  of  all 
his  countrymen,  by  allowing  the  author  of  his  friend's 
death  to  go  unharmed.  But  it  declared,  that,  after  pur- 
suing him  within  the  protection  of  the  Levites,  in  an 
appointed  place,  he  had  done  all  that  honor  demanded, 
and  all  that  religion  allowed.  He  had  saved  reputation, 
and  now  he  must  abstain  from  sacrilege.  Arrived  there, 
the  slayer  was  entitled  to  a  legal  investigation  of  his 
act ;  and,  if  ascertained  to  have  been  guilty,  the  "  aveng- 
er" obtained  all  his  right,  with  the  Law's  own  allow- 
ance and  aid.  If  an  acquittal  of  malicious  intention 
followed,  still  if  the  asylum  were  abandoned,  before  the 
death  of  the  high-priest,  (an  uncertain  time,  but  one 
likely  to  be  long  enough  to  suffer  the  excited  feelings 
of  the  avenger  to  cool,  as  well  as  for  reflection  to 
come  to  his  aid  and  that  of  those  who  might  be  urging 
him  on,  and  even  for  their  thirst  for  revenge  to  be  in 
some  measure  satisfied  by  what  was  a  .virtual  imprison- 
ment,) there  was  nothing  then  to  prevent  him  from  pur- 
suing his  intended  victim,  who,  through  such  negligence, 
had  forfeited  the  protection  extended  by  the  Law.* 

*  Numb.  XXXV.  9-34.  —  For  the  original  simple  outline  of  this  law, 
see  Ex.  xxi.  12  - 14.  —  The  primitive  sense  of  the  word  translated 
"avenger"  (Sxj,  12,)  has  been  the  subject  of  much  discussion.  Pointed 
as  we  have  it,  it  is  the  active  participle  of  Ss^,  to  redeem;  and  I  conceive 
that  it  is  best  so  understood.  The  Goel  was  called  so  from  his  right  of 
redemption,  (Lev.  xxv.  25,  48,)  though  that  was  but  one  of  his  offices. — 
"  Ye  shall  give  three  cities  "  &c.  (14) ;  the  cities  were  to  be  thus  scattered 
over  the  country,  in  order  that,  whenever  occasion  occurred  for  their  pro- 


422  NUMBERS  XXVIII.   1.  — XXXVI.  13.  [LECT. 

The  institution  of  sanctuary,  for  persons  guilty  of  a 
criminal  or  questionable  act,  was  thus  turned  to  the  best 
account  for  the  ends  of  public  justice.  He  who,  having 
stained  his  hands  with  blood,  had  sought  the  protection 
of  a  "  city  of  refuge,"  had  by  no  means  placed  himself 
in  a  situation  to  defy  the  Law.  He  was  only  safe  there 
until  he  could  be  brought  to  "  stand  before  the  congre- 
gation in  judgment."  Should  circumstances  (the  princi- 
ples for  estimating  which,  are  described  in  some  detail,) 
then  be  found  to  indicate  that  the  assault  had  been  ma- 
licious, he  was  brought  out  to  abide  the  vengeance  of 
him  to  whom  his  life  became  forfeit.  Should  it  prove 
that  the  fatal  blow  had  been  only  accidental,  that  sen- 
tence declared  his  life  inviolable,  provided  he  continued 
to  claim  the  protection  offered,  till  the  high-priest  should 
die ;  the  Law  aiming  to  enforce  a  salutary  caution  against 
all  occasions  of  fatal  accident,  by  subjecting  even  the 
unintentional  destroyer  of  iife  to  the  serious  inconven- 
ience of  a  long  separation  from  his  home. 

The  last  regulation  recorded  in  this  book,  is  conse- 
quent upon  one,  of  which  we  read  a  few  chapters  further 
back.*  The  effect  of  the  law,  that,  when  there  were  no 
sons,  daughters  might  inherit  land,  would  have  been, 
that,  if  they  married  into  another  tribe,  the  territorial 
possession  of  their  own  would  have  been  transferred 
to  that  into  which  they  were  adopted.  Solicitous  about 
such  a  result,  the  h.eads  of  the  tribe,  to  which  those 
females  belonged,  at  whose  solicitation  the  previous  rule 
had  been  arranged,  represented  the  inconvenience, 
which  would  follow,  to  Moses,  who  was  directed  to  pro- 
vide against  it  by  ordaining,t  that  heiresses  should  not 

tection,  there  might  always  be  one  within  convenient  distance.  —  With  30, 
compare  Deut.  xvii.  6,  and  see  my  remarks  thereupon. 

*  Numb,  xxvii.  1-11. 

t  xxxvi.  1  - 13.     "  And  when  the  jubilee  of  the  children  of  Israel 


XVIL]  NUMBERS  XXVIII.  1.  — XXXVI.   13.  423 

marry  out  of  their  own  tribe.  In  reading  of  such  suc- 
cessive provisions,  the  later  originating  and  grounded  in 
the  earlier,  one  sees  strong  reason  to  allow,  that  they 
were  recorded  by  one,  who  witnessed  their  successive 
enactment,  as  the  occasions,  that  led  to  them,  succes- 
sively arose. 

shall  be "  &c.  (4) ;  that  is,  even  when  a  jubilee  shall  arrive,  still  their 
estate  will  continue  to  belong  to  another  tribe  ;  even  then  it  will  not  re- 
vert to  the  tribe,  of  whose  district  it  was  originally  designed  to  be  a  part. 
By  the  Attic  law,  a  female  under  the  circumstances  here  defined,  had 
the  same  rights  and  obligations.  See  Passow's  and  Stephanus'  Lexi- 
cons,  Art.  irixXti'm.  —  "  These   are   the   oommandments Avhich 

the  Lord  commanded  .  .  ,  .  ,  in  the  plains  of  Moab  "  &c.  (xxxvi.  13) ;        fiK  ^ 
that  is,  as  he  had  commanded  others,  thirty-eight  years  before,  by  Sinai.         '  •  "^^ 
Compare  Lev.  xxvii.  34. 


424  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.  — XI.  31.  [LECT. 


.^- 


LECTURE   XVIII. 

DEUTERONOMY    I.   1.  — XI.    31. 
Occasion  and  Design  of   the   Book,  of   Deuteronomy.^ — Its  Axi- 

THENTICITT.  —  ItS     ChRONOLOGY.  —  MoSES     RECAPITULATES     SOME 

Events  of  the  First  Two  Years  after  the  Exodus,  —  and 
SOME  Events  of  the  Fortieth  Year,  —  and  exhorts  the  Pto- 

PLE  TO  obey  their  LaW, AND  ESPECIALLY  TO  ABSTAIN  FROM 

Idolatry.  —  He  selects  the  three  eastern  "Cities  of  Ref- 
uge." —  Recites  the  Circumstances  of  the  Delivery  of  the 
Law  at  Sinai. —  Urges  the  Duty  of  a  solicitous  Observ- 
ance OF  it,  and  of  Instructing  the  Young  in  its  Principles. 

—  Interdicts  Intercourse  with   the  Idolatrous  Canaanites, 

AND     commands     THEIR     EXPULSION.  RECOUNTS      INSTANCES      QF 

God's  Favor,  —  and  of  the  People's  Unfaithfulness.  —  Exhib- 
its THE  Consequences  of  Future  Obedience  and  Disobedience. 

—  Refers  to  a  Future  Act  of  National  Self-Consecration. 

A  YEAR  before  the  time  came^  for  invading  Canaan, 
Moses  had  been  informed,  that  he  was  not  to  be  per- 
mitted to  remain  at  the  nation's  head,  when  they  should 
take  possession  of  that  country.*  Of  the  reasons  for 
his  being  apprized  of  that  fact  so  long  beforehand,  it  is 
natural  to  suppose  that  this  was  one;  That  he  might 
have  opportunity  to  make  deliberately  and  fully,  before 
his  death,  such  arrangements  for  the  people  as  remained 
unmade,  and  such  communications  and  representations 
to  them  as  would  be  for  their  advantage  after  his  depar- 
ture, and  would  impress  their  minds  all  the  more  pro- 
foundly, on  account  of  the  circumstances  under  which 
they  would  remember  them  to  have  been  delivered.  I 
understand  him,  accordingly,  to  have  partly  employed 
himself,  during  this  interval,  in  preparing  what  was  to 

•  Numb.  XX.  1,12. 


XVIII.]  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.  — XI.  31.  425 

be  to  them  his  last  legacy  of  instruction  and  counsel; 
and  that  the  result  of  these  cares  of  his  has  been  trans- 
mitted to  us  in  his  book  now  known  by  the  name  of 
Deuteronomy.  It  divides  itself  into  three  parts,  each  of 
which  I  shall  make  the  subject  of  a  Lecture.  Whether 
the  first  of  these,  which  is  chiefly,  and  the  third,  which 
is  in  great  part,  of  a  hortatory  character,  were  committed 
to  writing  before  or  after  their  oral  delivery,  I  think  we 
are  unable  confidently  to  decide.  That  the  second, 
which  contains  a  promulgation  and  revision  of  various 
laws,  was  prepared  beforehand,  and  communicated  as  a 
written  composition,  appears  to  be  a  reasonable  infer- 
ence from  the  nature  of  its  subject  matter. 

One,  who  has  seen  reason  to  conclude,  that  the  pre- 
ceding books  were  the  work  of  Moses,  will  scarcely 
hesitate  to  refer  this,  with  an  equal  degree  of  confidence, 
to  the  same  origin.  Without  the  conclusion,  which  this 
book  presents,  the  history  begun  and  prosecuted  in 
Exodus,  Leviticus,  and  Numbers,  is  left  incomplete ; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  regarded  in  any  other  light  than 
as  a  sequel  to  those  books,  Deuteronomy  is  nothing 
else  but  a  disconnected,  immethodical  (I  might  almost 
say,  unmeaning)  fragment.  What  pervading  difference 
of  style,  between  the  books  respectively,  is  observable, 
is  precisely  that  which  ought  to  be  looked  for,  upon  the 
supposition  of  their  common  origin.  The  one  being 
professedly  a  set  historical  composition,  the  other  pro- 
fessedly a  spoken  address,  we  ought  (if  the  received 
theory  be  correct)  to  find  (what  we  actually  do  find) 
the  former  to  be  characterized  by  the  comparatively 
dry  manner  of  an  annalist,  the  latter  by  the  more  full 
and  earnest  style  of  oral  discourse  ;  and  whatever 
degree  of  copiousness  and  repetition  remains  unex- 
plained by  this  consideration,  was  naturally  incident  to 
the  advanced  age  which  the  speaker  is  represented  to 

VOL.  I.  54 


426  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.  — XI.  31.  [LECT. 

have  reached.  Events,  recorded  in  full  in  the  previous 
books,  are  referred  to  in  this,  cursorily  and  briefly,  in  a 
way  which  would  be  natural  for  one  who  had  made  the 
previous  record,  but  by  no  means  equally  so  for  any 
other  writer ;  and  the  whole  matter,  form,  and  tone  of 
the  address  are  such  as  undoubtedly  have  a  perfect 
suitableness  to  the  office,  the  temper,  and  the  present 
position  of  Moses,  as  exhibited  in  the  previous  books, 
a  suitableness  such  as  it  is  very  difficult  to  represent 
to  ourselves  as  the  result  of  any  artifice  of  imitation.* 

*  See  my  notes  on  pp.  75  -  77,  for  proof  that  Deuteronomy,  as  well  as 
the  preceding  parts  of  the  Pentateuch,  is  referred  to,  in  the  later  books, 
under  the  names  of  "  the  Law,"  "  the  book  of  Moses,"  &c.  Compare 
Josh.  viii.  30-32,  with  Deut.  xxvii.  1-6;  2  Kings  xiv.  6,  and  2  'Chron. 
XXV.  4,  with  Deut.  xxiv.  16  ;  Nehemiah  xiii.  1,  with  Deut.  xxiii.  3.  —  That 
at  the  Christian  era  the  quinpartite  arrangement  of  the  composition  as- 
cribed to  Moses,  already  existed,  (though  in  another  point  of  view  it  was 
considered  as  only  one,  the  New  Testament  habitually  calling  it  "the 
Law,")  may  be  seen  in  the  extract  froiti  Josephus  given  above,  p.  25,  note  f. 
The  same  two-fold  view  is  presented  in  the  Jewish  name  rr^lpn  "K'p^n 
n'f  ??n ,  the  Five  Fijlhs  of  the  Laio.  See  Buxtorf's  "  Lex.  Chald.  and 
Rab."  Art  ly'rpin.  So  the  Rabbins  say,  that  the  Law  formerly  made  but 
one  word,  or  one  verse,  (Eichhorn,  "  Einleitung  in  das  A.  T."  L  174,)  in- 
dicating the  original  undivided  sequence  of  the  matter,  which  is  now 
laid  off  into  the  chapters  and  verses  of  the  five  books.  But  how  an- 
cient these  forms  of  expression  are,  it  must  be  owned,  that  we  do  not 
know. 

In  a  careful  examination  of  the  arguments  against  the  common  origin 
of  Deuteronomy  and  the  preceding  books,  as  they  are  urged  by  De  Wette, 
Bertholdt,  and  Vater,  I  have  been  unable  to  find  any  thing  which  strikes 
me  as  weighty.  The  most  plausible  is,  I  think,  that  which  is  founded  on 
a  few  different  expressions,  used,  in  the  same  connexion,  in  the  books 
respectively.  And  of  these,  that  which  appears  to  me  the  most  specious, 
is  that  which  Vater  first  presents,  ("  Abhandlung  iiber  Moses  und  die 
Verfasser  des  Pentateuchs,  §  40,)  the  use  of  the  name  Horeb,  in  Deuter- 
onomy, for  the  mountain  where  the  Law  w£is  promulgated,  which,  in  the 
earlier  books,  is  called  Sinai.  But  Horeb  also  occurs  in  Exodus  (iii.  1 ; 
xvii.  6 ;  xxxiii.  6),  and  Sinai,  on  the  other  hand,  in  Deuteronomy  (xxxiii. 
2) ;  and,  if  it  were  not  so,  the  inquiry  might  be  made,  whether  there  is 
any  thing  extraordinary  in  a  person's  employing  one  name  of  a  place  in 
one  part  of  a  composition,  or  at  one  period  of  his  life  (for  it  is  very  proba- 
ble, that  nearly  forty  years  elapsed  between  the  writing  of  Exodus  and 


XVIII.]  DEUTERONOMY   I.   1.— XI.  31.  427 

The  time,  occupied  by  the  transactions  recorded  in 
Deuteronomy,  appears  to  have  been  about  two  months.* 
Of  these,  the  latter  is  represented  to  have  been  em- 
ployed in  mourning  for  Moses,t  so  that  it  is  natural  to 
refer  the  discourses  to  different  days  in  the  former 
month  (viz.  the  eleventh  month  of  the  fortieth  year 
from  the  Exodus) ;  the  time  being  thus  the  same  with 
that  spent  in  the  promulgation  of  the  laws  in  Leviticus.J 

In  the  first  four  chapters,  in  w^hich  Moses  is  repre- 
sented as  addressing  the  people  w'ith  a  brief  reference 
to  some  events  of  the  history  immediately  succeeding 
the  Exodus,  and  to  others  of  recent  occurrence,  and 
then  grounding  upon  them  an  exhortation  to  obedience, 
("Now,  therefore,  hearken,  0  Israel,  to  the  statutes 
which  I  teach  you,"  §)  I  think  we  may  discern  an  im- 
plied argument,  enabling  us  to  account  for  his  selection 
of  incidents,  which  is  a  fact  to  be  explained.  In  this 
discourse,  I  understand  his  purpose  to  be,  to  make  a 
representation  of  the  following  tenor.  "I  have  never 
selfishly  arrogated  authority  over  you.  On  the  contrary, 
I  have  been  willing  to  be  influenced  by  you,  and  to 
commit  to  you  a  discretion  of  your  own,  whenever  I 
might  with  safety.  Witness  my  proposal  to  you,  from 
the  time  of  your  first  organization,  to  make  an  election 
for  yourselves  of  subordinate  governors,  ||  and  my  readi- 
ness to  accede  to  your  request,  when,  having  made  all 
preparations  for  an  invasion  on  the  southern  border,  I 

that  of  Deuteronomy),  and  anotlier  name  at  another.  I  ask  myself  the 
question,  which  is  the  only  way  to  settle  it ;  and  I  call  to  mind,  that, 
whUe  I  have  perhaps  always  heretofore  called  my  native  commonwealth 
by  its  common  and  legal  name,  I  have  happened  repeatedly,  during  the 
last  year,  to  denominate  it,  in  writing,  the  "Bay  State."  Such  things  are 
matter  of  accident,  or  they  proceed  merely  from  the  taste  of  the  hour. 

*  Compare  Deut  L  3,  with  Josh.  L  1, 11 ;  iv.  19  ;  v.  10. 

f  Deut  xxxiv.  8.  J  See  p.  235. 

§  Deutiv.  1.  U  L9-18. 


* 


428  DEUTERONOMY   I.  1.— XI.  31.  [LECT. 

was  solicited  by  you  to  send  first  a  party  of  explorers 
into  the  country,  to  bring  you  back  a  report  of  its  con- 
dition.* When,  however,  you  have  chosen  to  use  this 
discretion  too  far,  so  as  to  reject  my  counsels,  and  be 
guided  by  your  own,  remember  how  you  have  brought 
on  yourselves  the  divine  displeasure,  and  in  what  griev- 
ous disasters  you  have  experienced  its  effects.!  On 
the  other  hand,  when  you  have  been  willing  to  give 
up  your  judgments  to  mine,  all  has  prospered  with  you. 
The  recent  period  of  your  obedience  has  been  .the 
period  of  your  successes.  When  you  demeaned  your- 
selves becomingly  towards  the  children  of  Esau,  observ- 
ing throughout  a  peaceable  demeanor  towards  them,  we 
obtained  the  passage  which  we  desired  to  the  eastward 
of  their  territory. J  When  you  followed  my  directions 
in  crossing  a  border  river  into  the  neighbourhood  of 
Palestine,  that  passage  was  successfully  effected ;  §  and 
your  obedience  in  respect  to  the  late  wars  with  the 
Amorites  and  Og,  has  been  attended  with  a  like  happy 
result, II  eventuating,  through  the  unprovoked  assault 
which  we  have  sustained  on  their  part,  in  the  acquisi- 
tion of  a  valuable  territory,  not  comprehended  within  our 
originally  contemplated  limits.  Let,  then,  your  experi- 
ence in  the  past  convey  to  you  profitable  instruction 
for  the  future.  As  you  see  that  disregard  of  my  warn- 
ings has  been  fruitful  of  disasters  to  you,  as  you  see 
that  you  have  had  the  best  reason  to  trust  me,  be  in- 
duced to  trust  me  still.  Trust  me,  when  I  shall  be 
taken  from  you,  so  as  carefully  to  make  the  Law,  which 
I  leave  with  you,  your  guide. H  Make  it  your  guide 
in  its  purity  and  wholeness,  free  from  any  retrenchment 
or  addition  of  your  own ;  **  that  Law,  which  first  and 

•  Deut  i.  19-24.  t  i.  25-46.  J  ii.  1-8. 

§  ii.  13, 18, 19.  I  ii.  26-iii.  17.  II  iv.  1.  **  iv.  2. 


XVIII.]  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.  — XI.  31.  429 

chiefly  enforces  on  you  its  commands  to  reserve  your 
homage  for  Jehovah  alone,*  and  to  worship  him  with- 
out the  use  of  any  ensnaring  visible  symbol ;  f  that  Law, 
whose  obligation  he  who  gave  it  will  assuredly  not  fail 
to  uphold,  by  bountifully  rewarding  the  obedient,  and 
grievously  punishing  the  transgressor."  t 

Such  I  take  to  be  substantially  the  argument  of  the 
discourse  recorded  in  these  first  four  chapters.  But  I 
cannot  forbear  to  remark,  in  a  word,  upon  the  address 
and  tone  of  conciliation,  as  well  as  of  authority  and  pa- 
thos, with  which  it  is  presented.  Of  the  three  branches 
of  it,  which  are  illustrated  by  facts,  the  illustration  of  the 
third,  (viz.  of  the  good  fortune  which  had  uniformly  follow- 
ed upon  obedience,)  is  much  the  most  copious,  the  recol- 
lections which  it  calls  up  being  of  far  the  most  gratifying 
character.  The  second,  suggesting  only  painful  and  hum- 
bling thoughts,  is  very  lightly  touched  upon ;  but  the  selec- 
tion of  topics  under  it,  (the  disastrous  route  experienced 
by  the  people  in  the  very  outset  of  their  national  career,^ 
and  the  doom  of  a  whole  generation  to  forfeit  its  share  in 
the  improved  national  fortunes,||)  are  of  the  most  solemnly 
impressive  character.  Under  the  first  head,  again,  while 
enough  is  said,  in  the  allusion  to  two  important  inci- 
dents, the  topic  is  not  unduly  pressed ;  and  the  effect, 
designed  to  be  produced  by  it,  is  increased  by  the 
perfectly  natural  and  highly  effective  introduction,  from 
time  to  time,  of  expressions  of  the  speaker's  disinterest- 
ed love  for  his  people,  and  hints,  that  his  place  of  au- 
thority had,  in  a  personal  point  of  view,  been  any  thing 
rather  than  a  place  of  ease  and  privileged  Nor  are 
opportunities   lost,  in   the  progress   of  the   discourse. 


•  Deut.  iv.  3,  4, 19,  28,  39.  t  iv-  15- 18. 

X  iv.  25-40.  §  i.  44.  ||  134,  35. 

t  i.  11;  iii.  23-27;  iv.  21,  22. 


430  DEUTERONOMY  I.   1.  — XI.  31.  [LECT. 

briefly  to  enforce  some  particular  obligation,  which  the 
immediate  topic  naturally  brings  to  view.* 

Having  finished  this  discourse,  we  are  told  that  Moses 

*  E.  g.  Deut.  iii.  ]8  - 20, 21,  22.  —  " Moses  spake  unto  all  Israel"  (i.  1). 
See  the  remark  (p.  165)  on  the  words  "  all  the  congregation."  —  "  On  this 
side  Jordan."  It  has  been  questioned,  whether  the  word  inj,'  ever  means  on 
this  side ;  its  common  sense  being,  on  the  other  side.  But  its  derivation 
from  the  root  l^j; ,  he  passed  over,  is  equally  suitable  to  either  pieaning  ; 
and  such  passages  as  Josh.  i.  15 ;  v.  1 ;  ix.  1 ;  xii.  7 ;  1  Sam.  xiv.  4,  40 ; 
1  Chron,  xxvi.  30,  appear  to  determine  the  usns  loquendi,  as  having  this 
latitude.  The  interpretation  will  be  perceived  to  be  important,  on  ac- 
count of  its  bearing  upon  the  question,  where  this  inscription  was  written ; 
since  Moses,  in  writing  it,  could  only  have  used  the  word  I^J*,  in  the 
sense  of  on  this  side.  —  "  The  Red  Sea."  There  is  no  good  authority  for 
this  rendering  of  our  translators.  fj^iD,  the  word  in  the  original,  is  probably 
the  proper  name  of  a  town.  See  Gesenius'  Lexicon,  ad  verb.  It  ap- 
pears very  likely  to  have  been  the  same  with  the  ns^D  of  Numb.  xxi.  14. 
Of  "  Tophel,"  and  the  rest,  we  know  nothing.  "  Hazeroth," \hajnlets,)  is 
a  name  given  to  various  places,  as  a  concordance  will  show.  — "  There 
are  eleven  days'  journey  "  &c.  (2) ;  these  words  are  not  improbably  the 
gloss  of  some  commentator,  who,  to  the  statement  (3)  that  it  was  "  in  the 
fortieth  year "  that  Moses  and  the  people  were  still  lingering  on  the  bor- 
der, has  prefixed  the  remark,  that,  had  they  come  to  the  nearest  point  of 
Canaan  in  a  direct  course  and  without  delay,  they  might  have  accom- 
■plished  the  march  from  Horeb  in  a  few  days. —  The  connexion  between 
6-8,  (with  which  compare  Numb,  x,)  and  9- 18,  (compare  Ex.  xviii.,  and 
p.  147,)  I  take  to  be  as  follows ;  Before  we  so  much  as  moved  from  Sinai, 
and  began  our  march  towards  the  land  of  our  inheritance,  even  "  at  that 
[early]  time  "  (9)  inexperienced  as  you  were,  /  had  addressed  you  with  a 
proposal  to  select  your  own  magistrates,  only  charging  them  on  my  part 
(16,  17)  to  discharge  their  function  righteously,  without  fear  or  favor,  as 
those  who  were  executing  a  trust  delegated  from  God.  The  designation 
of  them  (13)  was  committed  to  the  people,  though  their  institution  in  their 
office  (15,  Ex.  xviii.  25)  was  the  act  of  Moses.  —  In  the  exclamation  thrown 
in,  in  verse  11,  suggested  by  the  mention  of  his  having  formerly  referred 
to  their  growing  numbers,  we  have  a  beautiful  stroke  of  nature.  —  "I 
commanded  you  at  that  time  all  the  things  which  ye  should  do"  (18).  I 
have  not  seen,  anywhere,  what  I  think  is  the  true  explanation  of  this 
verse.  Geddes,  understanding  the  "  chief  of  the  tribes  "  (15)  to  be  the 
persons  here  said  to  be  "  commanded  "  respecting  the  fulfilment  of  their 
office,  as  the  connexion  indicates,  suggests  that  the  text  here  is  corrupt, 
and  that  the  original  reading  was,  "  I  commanded  them."  But  for  this 
there  is  no  authority  of  manuscripts  or  versions.  Moses  had  "command- 
ed," on  that  former  occasion,  the  "  chief  of  the  tribes."    He  was  now 


XVIII.]  DEUTERONOMY   I.  1.  — XI.  31.  431 

proceeded  to  designate  the  three  "cities  of  refuge" 
for  the  country  on  the  east  of  Jordan,  leaving  the  selec- 
tion of  the  other  three  for  the  time  when  the  region 

addressing  the  chief  of  the  tribes.  (See  note  above,  on  Deut.  i.  1.)  I 
suggest,  that,  in  a  natural  form  of  speech,  he  now  says,  "  I  commanded 
you,"  meaning,  I  commanded  those  who  were  formerly  in  the  same  official 
relation  which  you  now  sustain ;  I  commanded  the  then  incumbents  of 
your  office.  But  perhaps,  after  all,  the  verse  means,  I  went  on,  subse- 
quently, to  give  to  you  the  laws  I  received  on  Sinai.  —  With  19-45,  com- 
pare Numb,  xiii.,  xiv.,  also  p.  146.  —  Verse  37  suggests  the  same  remark 
•which  I  made  upon  1 1.  It  was  not  till  many  years  after  the  event  which 
he  is  now  reciting,  that  Moses  was  apprized  that  he  was  not  to  enter 
Palestine.  But  the  mention  of  the  threat  denounced  against  the  former 
generation  as  a  whole  (34-36),  leads  to  the  painful  thought,  and  the 
plaintive  expression,  of  his  own  similar  disappointment  —  "Ye  abode  in 
[or  ai,  or  byl  Kadesh  many  days,  according  to  the  days  that  ye  abode  " 
(46).  The  latter  clause  is  equivalent  to  saying,  as  you  remember.  The 
camp  may  have  remained  at  and  near  Kadesh  a  considerable  time.  But  I 
think  it  probable  (compare  Numb.  xiv.  25)  that  the  meaning  rather  is, 
ye  stopped  at  Kadesh,  that  is,  were  arrested  there,  made  no  progress  be- 
yond that  point,  into  Canaan,  for  "  many  days,"  viz.  the  years  of  their 
wanderings  in  Arabia  (compare  Deut  ii.  1).  —  With  iL  2-15,  compare 
Numb.  XX.  14-xxi.  12.  The  divine  direction  in  2  -  7,  not  to  molest  the 
Edomites,  is  not  related  in  Numbers  ;  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  un- 
successful negotiation  recorded  in  Numb.  xx.  14-21,  mentioned  in  the 
parallel  passage  before  us.  But  what  is  more  satisfactory,  the  result  of 
the  latter  incident  is  referred  to,  as  a  thing  well  known,  where  the  peo- 
ple are  reminded  (Deut  ii.  8,  compare  Numb.  xx.  21),  that  passing  by  the 
Edomites  of  Mount  Seir  proper,  they  had  turned,  and  reached  the  region 
east  of  them  by  a  less  frequented  way.  The  Edomites,  who  were  to  be 
"  afraid  "  of  them  (4),  were  clearly  not  the  inhabitants  of  the  central  part 
of  the  country,  who,  on  the  contrary,  had  prepared  to  maintain  their  inhos- 
pitable refusal  by  force,  (Numb.  xx.  20,  but  the  settlers  in  the  southern, 
and  less  populous  district,  near  to  Ezion-Gaber,  through  which  the  passage 

was  finally  effected  (Numb.  xxi.  4 ;  Deut  ii.  8, 29).  —  "We  passed 

from  Ezion-Gaber"  (8).  There  is  no  reason  whatever  for  supposing  this 
to  have  been  the  only  visit  made  to  the  neighbourhood  of  Ezion-Gaber, 
and,  accordingly,  identical  with  that  mentioned  in  Numb,  xxxiii.  35,  36. 
Ezion-Gaber  was  a  place  to  wliose  vicinity  they  would  be  very  likely  to 
return  repeatedly  in  the  course  of  their  prolonged  wanderings.  See  pp. 
366  -  370 ;  Deut.  ii.  1.  And  accordingly  there  is  no  difficulty  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  those  passages,  where  the  mention  of  it  occurs.  At  one 
time,  before  Aaron's  death  (Numb,  xxxiii.  38),  the  camp  removed  from  Ezion- 
Gaber  to  Kadesh  (Numb,  xxxiii.  36).  At  a  later  time  it  moved  back  again 
from  Kadesh  to  Ezion-Gaber.    Deut  i.  46 ;  ii.  1,  8.    "  Elath,"  now  Akaba, 


u 


432  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.— XL  31.  [LECT. 

west  of  that  river  should  be  occupied;  and  probably 
intending  that  the  choice,  which  he  made,  should  serve, 
in  respect  to  the  material  point  of  distance,  as  an  ex- 
is  a  well-known  port  near  Ezion-Gaber,  giving  its  name  to  the  Elanitic 
Gulf.  —  Of  the  direction,  recorded  in  verse  9,  to  abstain  from  disturbing 
the  Moabites,  we  read  nothing  in  the  book  of  Numbers.  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  all  Moses'  conduct  there  recorded,  is  in  conformity  with  it. 
Balak,  king  of  the  Moabites,  is  apprehensive  of  an  assault,  (Numb.  xxii.  - 
xxiv.,)  but  it  is  an  apprehension  which  Moses  does  nothing  to  justify.  The 
Midianites,  whom  he  did  attack,  (Numb,  xxxi.,)  were  confederates  of  the 
Moabites,  it  is  true,  but  they  were  of  a  different  stock  (compare  Gen.  xxv. 
2;  xi.  27;  xix.  37);  nor  is  there  the  least  reason  to  suppose,  that  any 
annoyance  was  oiFered  to  the  latter.  This  entirely  unconnected  mention 
of  the  rule  in  one  place,  and  of  conduct  exactly  and  remarkably  con- 
forming to  it,  in  the  other,  presents  an  instance  of  latent,  undesigned  co- 
incidence of  that  class,  which  Paley  adduces  in  support  of  the  autlienticity 
of  part  of  the  New  Testament.  —  The  passage  10- 12,  is  very  generally  re- 
garded by  the  commentators  as  an  interpolation.  An  historico-geographical 
memorandum  of  this  kind  is  so  unnaturally  disposed  in  the  midst  of  a 
spoken  discourse,  that  it  seems  quite  unreasonable  to  suppose  the  original 
writer,  whether  Moses  or  some  other  person,  to  have  thus  inserted  it.  It 
has  every  appearance  of  having  been  a  marginal  gloss,  (founded  on  Gen. 
xxxvi.  20-30;  xiv.  5,6,)  which  eventually  obtained  a  transfer,  not  un- 
common with  such  comments,  into  the  text.  Those,  who  look  upon  the 
passage  as  authentic,  regard  Moses  as  saying  in  the.  last  clause  of  verse 
12,  "  as  Israel  is  to  do  unto  the  land  "  &c.  He  will  then  be  understood  as 
reminding  the  peopje,  that  the  course  which  they  were  to  take  was  the 
same,  which  had  been  successfully  pursued  by  their  relatives  the  Edomites 
and  Moabites,  for  the  acquisition  of  their  respective  territories.  The 
words  "aawf  /"  are  interpolated  by  our  translators  into  verse  13,  to  break 
an  abruptness  which  now  exists  in  the  Hebrew,  but  which  did  not  exist 
originally,  provided  10-12  are  spurious.  —  The  vroid  giant  (Deut.  ii.  11), 
is  an  unfortunate  translation  of  D^Ni)") ,  as  carrying  us  back  to  the  imagi- 
nations of  the  nursery.  It  appears,  however,  somewhat  like  our  word 
.Amazon,  to  have  belonged,  in  its  primitive  sense,  to  a  race  of  uncom- 
mon robustness,  and  to  have  taken  a  secondary,  more  comprehensive  mean- 
ing, accordingly.  (Compare  20,  21 ;  Gen.  xiv.  5;  2  Sam.  xxi.  16.)  —  With 
19,  compare  Gen.  xix.  36,  38.  —  The  passage  20-23,  is  believed  to  be  an 
interpolation,  on  the  same  grounds  as  10-12.  —  Verse  24,  presents  no 
contradiction  to  what  has  been  said  (p.  378)  of  the  war  with  Sihon  having 
been  defensive  on  the  part  of  the  Jews.  The  event,  foreknown  by  God, 
was  communicated  by  him  to  Moses  (24,  25,  31 ).  But  Moses,  so  far  from 
offering  violence,  made  a  friendly  and  humble  proposal  to  Sihon  (26-30) ; 
nor  was  it  till  that  prince  proceeded  to  follow  up  his  refusal  by  an  hostiie 
expedition  (32),  which  there  was  no  resource  left  but  to  oppose,  that  the 


XVm.]  DEUTEROJMOMY   I.   1.  — XL  31.  433 

ample  for  the  choice  which  would  devolve  on  his 
successor.* 

From  this  interruption,  and  the  formality  with  which 
the  passage  that  next  follows  is  introduced,  it  is  natu- 

Israelites  turned  their  arms  against  him  (33-37,  compare  Deut  xxix.  7). 
—  From  verse  29  it  appears,  that  some  of  the  people  of  Edom  and  Moab, 
through  whose  confines  the  Israelites  passed,  had  treated  them  with  more 
courtesy  than  had  been  exercised  by  their  respective  governments.  Com- 
pare xxiii.  3,  4;  Numb.  xx.  19-21. —  "The  Lord  thy  God  hardened  his 
spirit,  and  made  his  heart  obstinate  "  (30) ;  a  well-known  form  of  speech, 
not  only  of  the  Hebrews,  hot  of  other  ancients,  accord  nsr  to  which,  what- 
ever takes  place,  is  piously  referred  to  a  Divine  providence.  Compare 
2  Sam.  xxiv.  1,  with  1  Cbron.  xxi.  1.  So  Homer  says  of  Helen,  (Odys. 
Y.  222,) 

Tqi>  i'  Urn  f'i?,»i  Bias  *'£'("  1(yi*  itiKif. 

See  Le  Clerc's  «Ars  Critica,"  pars  2,  sect  1,  cap.  4,  §6,  7. —With  34, 
compare  Numb.  xxi.  35,  and  my  note  thereupon.  A  literal  rendering  of 
the  Hebrew  here  is  as  follows;  "We  devoted  every  city  of  men,  women, 
and  children." — .With  Deut.  iii.  1-7,  compare  Numb.  xxi.  33-35. — 
The  authenticity  of  9 -.11,  and  14,  is  discredited  on  the  same  grounds 
as  ii.  10  -  12.  —  ijoj;  (11),  instead  of  bedslead,  probably  means  bier,  or 
sarcophagus.  (Compare  2  Sara.  iiL  31 ;  where  n^p,  another  word  com- 
monly signifying  bed,  clearly  has  this  sense ;  the  Syriac  version  of  Luke 
vii.  14,  uses  the  word  corresponding  to  tynj»  ;  and  the  bed  of  Og,  if  shown 
anywhere,  would  probably  be  shown  at  his  capital  city,  which  was  Ashte- 
roth ;  Deut.  i.  4.)  The  bier  or  sarcophagus  of  Og  probably  became  known 
to  the  Israelites  first  in  the  time  of  David  (2  Sam.  xii.  26),  and  to  a  time 
as  late  as  this,  it  is  natural  to  refer  this  gloss ;  though  it  is  true  that, 
at  an  earlier  period,  they  may  have  known  the  antiquities  of  that  city 
by  report.  —  With  12  -  20,  compare  Numb,  xxxii.  —  "  We  abode  (29)  in  the 
valley  over  against  Beth  Peor  "  (compare  Deut.  iv.  46  ;  xxxiv.  6) ;  that  is, 
they  stopped  at  this  place  to  hear  Moses'  last  commands,  since  he  (28)  was 
not  to  be  permitted  to  accompany  them  further.  —  With  iv.  3,  4,  compare 
Numb.  XXV. —"Which  the  Lord  thy  God  hath  divided"  &c.  (19);  this 
clause,  if  understood  to  mean,  that  the  heavenly  bodies  were  divided  as 
objects  of  worship,  is  to  be  explained  on  the  same  principles  as  Deut  ii. 
30  ;  but  I  tliink  the  sense  rather  is,  that  they  are  not  fit  objects  of  wor- 
ship, but  only  creations  of  Jehovah,  the  one  universal  benefactor,  who 
had  himself /urnisAerf  them  for  the  use  of  all  nations.  —  "The  iron  fur- 
nace "  (20),  i.  e.  the  furnace  for  smelting  iron,  intensely  heated  ;  a  figure 
illustrating  the  severity  of  their  servitude.  —  21,  22,  give  occasion  for  a 
repetition  of  the  remark  made  on  L  11.  —  With  25- 32,  compare  Lev. 
xxvi.,  and  my  observations  thereupon. 
»  Deut.  iv.  41  -  43.     Compare  Numb.  xxxv.  9-15,  and  Deut.  xix,  1  - 10. 

VOL.  1.  55 


434  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.  — XL  31.  [LECT. 

ral  to  regard  the  latter  as  the  record  of  another  dis- 
course, delivered  on  a  different  day.*  On  the  occasion 
of  which  I  have  just  been  treating,  Moses'  course  of 
remark  had  led  him  to  represent  to  the  people,  in  con- 
clusion, their  obligation  to  render  a  zealous  obedience 
to  God's  Law,  and  the  ingratitude,  folly,  and  danger  of 
deserting  his  service  for  that  of  any  idol  deity.  Re- 
suming this  theme,  he  now  proceeds  to  urge,  that  the 
people  had  voluntarily  covenanted  to  take  Jehovah  for 
their  sovereign ;  f  that  they  had  themselves  heard  part 
of  the  terms  of  their  allegiance  (which  he  recites)  an- 
nounced by  their  Divine  ruler  in  an  audible  voice,  and 
with  accompaniments  of  the  most  impressive  solemni- 
ty,t  and  that  they  would  have  heard  the  rest,  but  for 
their  own  desire,  that  the  further  communications  in- 
tended might  be  made  to  him  for  their  use.§  Having 
been  received  by  him  under  such  circumstances,  agreea- 
bly to  their  wish,  and  for  their  benefit,  they  were  now 
bound,  he  says,  to  keep  them  with  a  punctilious  observ- 
ance. ||  The  spirit  of  them  all  was,  that  they  should 
acknowledge  the  undivided  sovereignty  of  Jehovah,  and 
devote   to   him   their  best  affections.il     These  were 

*  Deut  iv.  44-49,  is  rather,  I  think,  the  introduction  to  the  second 
discourse,  than  the  conclusion  of  the  first.  The  division  made  by  41-43, 
favors  this  view  of  it,  and  in  its  structure  it  resembles  the  previous  intro- 
duction in  i.  1  -  5 ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  its  choice  of  language, 
partly  different,  and  partly  the  same  with  the  other,  to  describe  the  place 
where  Moses  addressed  tiie  people,  makes  it  appear  less  likely,  that  the 
one  was  intended  to  open,  the  other  to  close,  the  same  narrative.  Moses, 
very  naturally,  was  careful  to  note  in  both  instances,  that  the  admonitions 
thus  placed  on  record,  were  uttered  by  him  to  the  people,  at  the  last  op- 
portunity which  he  had  to  address  them,  and  when  he  was  fresh  from  the 
only  victories  which  he  was  permitted  to  win  towards  their  territorial 
establishment  — "  This  law  "  (44) ;  the  word  would  better  be  rendered 
instruction,  agreeably  to  its  primitive  sense  ;  so  in  i.  5.  —  For  "  Sion " 
(48),  the  Syriac  reads  "  Sirion  " ;  at  all  events,  the  definition  attached,  dis- 
tin^ishes  it  from  Mount  Sion  at  Jerusalem. 

t  V.  1  -3.  •  t  V.  4  -22.  §  V.  23-31. 

||v.32-vi.  2.  1IvL3-5. 


XVIII.]  DEUTERONOMY  I.   1.  — XI.  31.  435 

lessons,  which  they  ought  to  keep  constantly  before  the 
view  of  their  own  minds,  and  teach,  with  an  assiduous 
diligence,  to  their  children.*  Presently,  by  the  very 
favor  of  their  sovereign,  who  was  about  to  establish 
them  in  the  home  of  their  fathers,  they  were  to  be  ex- 
posed to  communication  with  idolaters ;  but  the  fear  of 
his  righteous  displeasure,  and  the  hope  of  his  approba- 
tion, should  both  be  motives  to  hold  them  to  their 
fealty.f  With  the  idolatrous  inhabitants  of  the  country, 
which  was  to  become  their  own,  they  were  not  only  to 
enter  into  no  alliances,  but,  for  the  greater  security's 
sake,  they  were  to  admit  no  intercourse.!  Their  first 
act  was  to  be  an  utter  destruction  of  the  monuments  of 
that  false  and  depraving  worship ;  §  and  the  ultimate 
complete  removal  of  such  dangerous  neighbours  was  to 
be  an  object  perpetually  kept  in  view,  though  it  was 
only  by  degrees  to  be  accomplished. ||  They  were  not 
to  distrust  their  power  to  effect  this  ;  the  God,  who  had 
always  been  such  a  benefactor  to  them,  would  give  them 
power.l[  If  they  continued  faithful,  they  need  have  no 
fear  of  the  alienation  of  a  love,  which  by  manifold  and 
unmerited  bounties  he  had  so  amply  proved;**  while 
his  displeasure,  should  they  be  so  elated  by  prosperity, 
as  to  forget  their  dependence  and  their  obligations,  and 
provoke  it,  would  be  testified  by  the  infliction  of  calami- 
ties as  heavy  as  those  denounced  agmnst  the  smful  tribes 
they  were  invading.ff 

*  Deut  vL  C-9,  20-25.  f  vi.  10-  19.  J  viL  1  -4. 

§  vii.  5,2^,  26.  ||  vii.  22-24. 

IT  vii.  17-21.  **  vii.  6-16. 

ff  viiL  1-20. — "  The  Lord  made  not  this  covenant  with  our  Others  "  &c. 
(v.  3) ;  that  is,  not  with  our  fathere  alone ;  it  equally  concerns  us.  See 
references  in  page  305,  note;  compare  John  jv.21.  —  With  Deut  v.  5, 
compare  Ex.  xix.  16  et  seq.  —  Between  the  record  of  the  Decalogue,  in 
Ex.  XX.  2-  17,  and  that  in  Deut.  v.  6-21,  the  following  diversities  occur, 
besides  that  remarked  on,  at  length,  at  pp.  190-193;  viz,  the  word  keep, 
in  Deut  v.  12,  corresponds  to  rememher,  in  Ex.  xx.  8,  and  the  last  clause 


436  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.  — XI.  31.  [LECT. 

A  question  of  special  interest  presents  itself  in  this 
connexion.  It  relates  to  the  course  of  procedure,  dic- 
tated by  the  Divine  will,  in  respect  to  the  nations  of 
Canaan.  The  established  opinion  is,  that  the  Israehtes 
received  a  Divine  command  to  put  all  the  inhabitants 
o(  that  country  to  death,  without  exception,  refusing 
to  accede  to  any  terms  of  capitulation,  such  as  should 
give  exemption  from  this,  sentence.  With  the  excep- 
tion of  one  important  passage,  which,  however,  as  to  its 
relations  to  the  main  subject,  may  not  be  inconveniently 
treated  here,  we  have  already  before  us"  all  the  materials 

of  the  former  verse,  "  as  the  Lord  thy  God  hath  commanded  thee,"  is 
wanting  in  the  latter;  Deut.  v,  14,* adds  the  words  "thine  ox,  nor  thine 
ass,"  and  the  clause,  "  that  thy  man-servant  and  thy  maid-servant  may 
rest  as  well  as  thou  ; "  in  Deut.  v.  16,  two  new  clauses  are  supplied,  viz. 
"  and  that  it  may  go  well  with  thee,"  and  "  as  the  Lord  thy  God  hath 
commanded  thee;"  to  the  last  four  commandments  in  Deuteronomy,  the 
copulative  conjunction  is  prefixed ;  in  ftie  ninth  and  tenth,  the  words 
aw  {falsehood),  and  n^xnri  (covet),  occur  in  the  place  of  their  synonyms, 
inja^  and  nronp,  and  the  tenth  transposes  the  order  of  the  first  two 
clauses,  as  they  are  arranged  in  Exodus,  and  adds  the  words  "  his  field." 
How  many  ol  these  verbal  variations  have  arisen  from  erroneous  trans- 
cription, it  is  impossible  now  to  ascertain.  But  that,  as  far  as  they  sub- 
sisted in  the  original  records,  that  of  Deuteronomy  is  to  be  taken  for  the 
more  exact,  the  declaration  in  v.  22  seems  to  leave  us  no  room  to  doubt 
Moses  had  heard  the  Decalogue  pronounced,  wKen  he  recorded  it  in  Exo- 
dus ;  when  he  recorded  it  in  Deuteronomy,  it  was  in  his  hands,  inscribed 
in  permanent  letters. —  "Ye  shall  observe  to  do,  therefore"  &c.  (32); 
Moses  reasons  with  them  from  their  own  engagement  in  27.  —  "  Ye  shall 
walk  in  aZ/the  ways  which  the  Lord  your  God  hath  commanded  you, 

that  ye  may  prolong  your  days"  &c.  (33).     Here  (compare  vi.  2, 

24 ;  viii.  1 ;  xL  18-21 ;  xxx.  16)  we  find  the  same  prolonged  national  life 
(see  p.  173,  note),  which  is  spoken  of  in  the  fifth  commandment  in  connexion 
with  filial  piety,  promised  as  the  reward  of  obedience  to  the  Law  in  general. 
—  "These  are  the  commandments, the  statutes,  and  the  judgments,  which 
the  Lord  your  God  commanded  to  teach  you  "  (vi.  1 ).  I  seem,  to  myself, 
to  behold  Moses,  wliile  he  pronounces  these  words,  extending,  in  the 
people's  view,  the  volume  in  which  he  had  recorded  the  revelations  made 
tp  him  at  Sinai,  for  their  benefit ;  compare  v.  30,  31.  —  "Thou  shalt  bind 
them  for  a  sign  upon  thine  hand  "  &c.  (8,  9).  There  seems  little  room 
to  doubt  the  propriety  of  giving  a  figurative  interpretation  to  these  words  ; 
compare  Ex.  xiii.  9.  —  With  Deut.  vi.  16,  compare  Ex.  xvii.  1-7. 


XVIII.]  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.  — XI.  31.  437 

which  the  Law  affords  towards  a  solution  of  that 
question. 

I  ask  attention,  first,  to  the  fact,  that,  in  the  recital  of 
the  Divine  commands  touching  this  subject,  we  nowhere 
read  any  such  direction  as  is  supposed,  for  a  universal 
massacre  of  the  Canaanites.  Those  which  occur  in 
early  passages  of  these  books,  I  will  here  set  down  at 
length.     They  are  as  follows ; 

"  Mine  angel  shall  go  before  thee,  and  bring  thee  in 
unto  the  Amorites,  and  the  Hittites,  and  the  Perizzites, 
and  the  Canaanites,  and  the  Hivites,  and  the  Jebusites ; 
and  I  will  cUt  them  off.  Thou  shalt  not  bow  down  to 
their  gods,  nor  serve  them,  nor  do  after  their  works ; 
but  thou  shalt  utterly  overthrow  them,  and  quite  break 
down  their  images."  * 

"  I  will  send  my  fear  before  thee,  and  will  destroy  all 
the  people  to  whom  thou  shalt  come ;  and  I  will  make 
all  thine  enemies  tu7'n  their  backs  unto  thee.  And  I 
will  send  hornets  before  thee,  which  shall  drive  out 
the  Hivite,  the  Canaanite,  and  the  Hittite  from  before 
thee.  I  will  not  drive  them  out  from  before  thee  in  one 
year,  lest  the  field  become  desolate,  and  the  beast  of 
the  field  multiply  against  thee.  By  Uttle  and  litde  I  will 
drive  them  out  from  before  thee,  until  thou  be  increased, 
and  inherit  the  land.  And  I  will  set  thy  bounds  from 
the  Red  Sea  even  unto  the  sea  of  the  Philistines,  and 
from  the  desert  unto  the  river ;  for  I  will  deliver  the 
inhabitants  of  the  land  into  your  hand,  and  thou  shalt 
drive  them  out  from  before  thee.  Thou  shalt  make  no 
covenant  with  them,  nor  with  their  gods.  They  shall 
not  dwell  in  thy  land,  lest  they  make  thee  sin  against 
me."t 

"  Observe  thou  that  which  I  command  thee  this  day. 
Behold,  I  drive  out  before  thee  the  Amorite,  and  the 

*  Ex.  xxiii.  23,  24.  t  Ex.  xxiiL  27-33. 


438  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.  — XI.  31.  [LECT. 

Canaanite,  and  the  Hittite,  and  the  Perizzite,  and  the 
Hivite,  and  the  Jebusite.  Take  heed  to  thyself,  lest 
thou  make  a  covenant  with  the  inhabitants  of  the  land 
whither  thou  goest,  lest  it  be  for  a  snare  in  the  midst 
^  of  thee.  But  ye  shall  destroy  their  altars,  break  their 
images,  and  cut  down  their  groves."  * 

"Ye  shall  drive  out  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  land 
from  before  you,  and  destroy  all  their  pictures,  and 
destroy  all  their  molten  images,  and  quite  pluck  down 
all  their  high  places.  And  ye  shall  dispossess  the  in- 
habitants of  the  land,  and  dwell  therein But 

if  ye  will  not  drive  out  the  inhabitants  of  the  land  from 
before  you,  then  it  shall  come  to  pass,  that  those  which 
ye  let  remain  of  them  shall  be  pricks  in  your  eyes,  and 
thorns  in  your  sides,  and  shall  vex  you  in  the  land 
wherein  ye  dwell.  Moreover,  it  shall  come  to  pass,  that 
/  shall  do  unto  you  as  I  thought  to  do  unto  them."  f 

Upon  these  passages,  I  make  two  remarks  ;  1.  The 
command  given  by  God  to  Moses,  was  for  the  expulsion 
of  the  Canaanites,  not  for  their  extirpation  by  the  sword ; 
2.  That  it  was  declared  from  the  first,  that  their  ex- 
pulsion was  to  be  a  gradual  process ;  a  declaration  which 
accorded  with  subsequent  facts,  as  we  are  to  see  here- 
after, and  which  is  inconsistent  with  the  common  sup- 
position of  an  unsparingly  exterminating  inroad.J 

What  we  learn,  then,  from  Moses'  record  of  the  Di- 
vine commands  to  him  respecting  the  treatment  of  the 

*  Ex.  xxxiv.  11-13.  t  Numb,  xxxiii.  52-55. 

I  I  may  add,  that  the  menace,  at  the  close  of  the  last  quotation,  throws 
light  upon  the  design.  God  threatens,  if  the  command  was  not  executed, 
to  visit  the  Israelites  themselves  with  the  inflictions  he  had  denounced 
against  the  nations  of  Canaan.  The  command  was  not  executed  ;  and 
what  followed  ?  Not  universal  individual  extermination,  but  national  disas- 
ter and  overthrow,  as  we  read  in  the  book  of  Judges.  —  The  "destruc- 
tion" spoken  of  (Ex.  xxiii.  27)  is  naturally  understood,  in  the  connexion, 
of  that  national  destruction,  which  was  involved  in  expulsion  from  the 
national  territory. 


XVIII.]  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.— XI.  31.  439 

Canaanites,  (distinct  from  the  treatment  of  the  monu- 
ments of  their  corrupt  worship,)  is  simply  this;  that 
those  nations  were  to  be  dispossessed  and  expelled,  and 
that  this  object,  though  it  was  only  to  be  gradually  ac- 
complished, was  to  be  undertaken  and  pursued  from  the 
time  of  the  first  entrance  of  the  Israelites  within  the 
Canaanitish  border.. 

The  Canaanites  were  to  be  expelled  from  the  terri- 
tory, which  the  Israelites  claimed  for  their  own  settle- 
ment. This  was  the  consummation,  which  Moses  was 
bound  to  keep  in  view,  as  long  as  he  remained  at  the 
people's  head,  and  to  bequeath  to  the  care  of  his  suc- 
cessor. How  were  they  to  be  expelled  ?  Every  one 
will  be  ready  to  say,  that  if  they  could  be  frightened  out 
of  the  country,  at  the  cost  of  little  bloodshed,  by  the 
threat  of  an  unsparing  severity,  should  they  oppose 
an  unavailing  resistance,  such  a  course  would  be  the 
course  of  wisdom  and  mercy,  both  for  themselves  and 
for  the  invading  force.  Could  matters  be  so  arranged, 
that  sudden  terror  should  be  made  to  do  the  work  of  a 
protracted  contest,  the  objects  of  humanity  would  be 
essentially  served,  at  the  same  time  that  the  national 
object  would  be  effected ;  and  even  if,  to  carry  out  the 
plan,  and  make  the  menace  regarded,  the  severities 
threatened  should  be  actually  executed  to  some  partial 
extent,  the  panic  thus  diffused,  causing  security  to  be 
sought  in  flight,  might  be  the  saving  of  life  on  a  large 
scale. 

Such,  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying,  was  the  course 
which  Moses  adopted,  in  fulfilling  his  commission,  to  rid 
the  country  claimed  by  his  people,  of  the  presence  of 
the  Canaanitish  nations.  He  desired  to  have  a  timely 
terror,  which  would  not  touch  life,  do  the  work  of  a 
bloody  force.  Arrived  on  the  border  of  the  Canaanites, 
he  proceeded  to  put  that  plan  in  execution.    Had  he 


440  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.  — XI.  31.  [LECT. 

desired  to  subject  them  to  an  indiscriminate  slaughter, 
there  can  be  no  doubt,  reasoning  on  the  common  princi- 
ples of  action,  that  he  would  have  kept  his  purpose  to 
himself  till  he  had  them  within  his  power.  As  yet,  this 
was  by  no  means  the  case.  Of  the  four  borders  of  their 
country,  hi§  army  only  occupied  a  part  of  one.  To  the 
north  and  south  there  was  still  free  egress,  and  the 
western  was  a  maritime  frontier,  allowing  them  to  seek 
safety  and  freedom  over  an  element,  to  which,  from 
their  commercial  habits,  they  were  accustomed.  Had 
his  object  been  wholesale  slaughter,  nothing  could  have 
been  more  sure  to  frustrate  it,  than  to  make  proclama- 
tion of  it  beforehand  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the 
intended  victims. 

Yet  such  proclamation  Moses  makes.  At  the  tune 
that  he  addressed  the  host  of  Israel  wuth  the  directions, 
the  mention  of  which  introduced  these  remarks,  it  lay 
upon  the  Canaanitish  line.  The  encampment  was 
probably  as  open  to  the  resort  of  the  neighbouring  in- 
habitants, as  it  had  been  before  to  the  men  of  Midian. 
At  all  events,  an  army  is  nowhere  an  isolated  body,  nor 
does  that  which  is  done  or  said  in  it  with  publicity,  fail 
to  become  known  in  the  surrounding  country.  Several 
weeks  were  still  to  elapse  before  the  movement  of  in- 
vasion ;  time  enough  for  the  inhabitants  to  collect  their 
property,  and  leisurely  and  peaceably  to  retire.  Under 
these  circumstances,  is  it  conceivable,  that,  if  Moses  had 
thirsted  for  their  blood,  he  would  in  such  a  public  man- 
ner, (for,  let  it  be  remembered,  his  words  were  spoken 
to  "  all  Israel,"  not  written  to  be  laid  by,)  have  an- 
nounced his  relentless  purpose?  Instead  of  creating 
or  adding  to  a  panic,*  which  would  be  so  likely  to  cheat 
him  of  his  victims,  would  he  not  have  carefully  dissem- 
bled till  the  prey  was  within  his  grasp  ? 

*  Compare  Josh,  ii,  9, 11. 


XVIII.]  DEUTERONOMY   I.   1.  — XI.   31.  44! 

These  circumstances  indicate  very  satisfactorily,  to 
my  mind,  that  his  purpose  was  the  opposite  of  what 
has  been  imagined.  He  had  been  bidden,  in  what  we 
have  before  read,  to  expel  the  Canaanites.  He  pro- 
ceeds to  fulfil  that  commission  by  means  of  threats, 
which  he  trusted,  would,  to  a  great  extent,  remove 
any  opportunity  for  their  own  execution,  since,  as  yet, 
there  was  ample  time  for  his  words  to  go  abroad,  be- 
fore the  evils  they  denounced  could  be  incurred,  (no 
part  of  Canaaa  being  distant  more  than  a  hundred  miles 
from  the  place  of  his  encampment,)  and  for  those,  for 
whom  the  warning  was  intended,  to  find  safety  in  timely 
flight,  whether  by  land  or  sea.  Accordingly,  we  find 
him,  after  having  repeated  the  command  in  substantially 
the  same  general  form  in  which  we  have  read  that  he 
received  it,*  going  on  in  a  later  passage  to  say,  that  with^ 
the  cities  of  the  seven  devoted  nations  his  people  must 
not  even  make  a  treaty  to  spare  their  lives,  on  condition 
of  reducing  them  to  servitude ;  t  a  rule,  however,  for 
which  he  nowhere  appeals  to  any  divine  authority. J 

*  Deut  vii.  1  -  5,  16, 22 ;  xii.  1-3.  t  xx.  16  -  18. 

I  "  Thou  shalt  smite  them,  and  utterly  destroy  them, neither 

shalt  thou  make  marriages  with  them  "  &c.  (vii.  2,  3).  On  the  common 
theory,  that  the  destruction  intended  was  universal  massacre,  an  extraordi- 
nary anti-climax  is  here  presented.  —  "Ye  shall  cut  down  their  groves" 
(5) ;  if  this,  which  is  derived  from  the  Septuagint  and  Vulgate,  is  the  true 
sense  of  the  word,  the  reference  is  to  the  plantations  which  were  the 
scene  of  licentious  idolatrous  rites.  Gesenius,  (Lexicon  Art.  mtl'X) 
understands  an  image  of  ^slarte,  the  Phenician  Venus.  —  With  12-15 
compare  Lev.  xxvi.,  and  my  remarks  thereupon.  —  In  16,  22,  we  find 
nothing  additional  to  what  occurs  in  passages  before  quoted.  —  "  The  Lord 
thy  God  will  send  the  hornet "  (20).  See  p.  182,  note  on  Ex.  xxiii.  28. 
Compare  Josh.  vi.  —  "This  day"  (viii.  1);  the  phrase,  it  is  well  known, 
is  used  with  great  latitude  ;  compare  ix.  1.  — "That  he  might  make  tliee 
know,  that  man  doth  not  live  by  bread  only "  &c.  (3) ;  that  is,  that  he 
might  satisfy  thee,  that  God,  by  his  own  will  and  power,  is  able  to  make 
provision,  when  common  provisions  fail.  — "  Thy  raiment  waxed  not  old 
upon  thee,  neither  did  thy  foot  swell,  these  forty  years  "  (4).    The  received 

VOL.  I.  56 


"i 


442  DEUTERONOMY   I.  1.  — XI.  31.  [LECT, 

We  might  feel  confident  in  saying,  that  many  of  the  * 
Canaanites,  hearing  that  such  a  powerful  and  implacable 
enemy  was  on  their  borders,  which  it  was  preparing 
soon  to  cross,  (an  enemy  whose  force  and  prowess  had 
been  already  proved  by  easy  conquests  obtained  over 
their  most  martial  neighbours,  and  whose  merciless  in- 
tentions had  been  formally  proclaimed,)  would  take  to 
flight  in  due  season,  abandoning  their  lands  for  the 
preservation  of  their  lives.  Nor  could  an  advocate  of 
the  view  I  have  been  presenting  be  reasonably  called 
upon,  in  the  comparative  silence  of  history  concerning 
those  remote  times,  for  any  further  evidence  of  the  fact 
than  its  strong  probability.  But  it  so  happens,  or  rather 
(one  is  authorized  to  say)  it  has  been  so  ordered  by  a 
good  Providence,  that  some  positive  proof  of  the  fact 
has  been  preserved.  The  historian  Procopius  wrote  in 
the  sixth  century,  but  he  declares  himself  to  have  taken 
his  statements ■  concerning  the  Canaanites  "from  those 
who  had  written  the  ancient  Phenician  history";  nor 
is  his  testimony  liable  to  any  suspicion  on  the  ground 
of  his  having  desired  to  furnish  aid  towards  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  Mosaic  records,  since  nothing  could 
have  been  further  than   this  from   his   purpose.      In 

interpretation  of  this  verse  has  a  most  viciously  Jewish  taint.  The  sup- 
position that  the  garments  and  shoes  of  the  Jews  were  miraculously  pre- 
served from  decay,  of  course  involves  also  that  of  thejr  miraculous  growth 
along  with  the  growth  of  the  wearer ;  and  this  while  the  wealth  of  the 
people  consisted  in  flocks,  which  could  furnish  them  abundance  of  wool 
and  leather,  and  among  the  women,  who  had  so  wrought  in  the  construc- 
tion of  the  Tabernacle  (Ex.  xxxv.  25),  there  was  no  want  of  operative  skill. 
A  sober  expositor  will  hardly  hesitate  to  say,  that  here,  in  animated  lan- 
guage, according  with  the  whole  strain  of  the  context  (compare  3,  9),  it 
is  declared,  that  Providence  had  ordered  tilings  so  favorably  for  the  Jews, 
that  they  had  never  wanted  for  proper  clothing,  obtained  either  by  their 
own  manufacture,  or  by  commerce  with  others.  Indeed,  the  word  nnSs, 
rendered  "  waxed  old,"  out  of  which  the  whole  misconception  grows, 
might  be  equally  well  translated /m'Zerf,  or  was  deficient;  compare  S3, 
^75  J ,  SlK .  —  With  15,  compare  Numb.  xx.  1  - 11 ;  xxi.  6. 


XVIII.]  DEUTERONOMY   I.  1— XI.  31.  443 

the  second  book  of  his  "Vandal  War,"  he  writer  as 
follows ;  "  When  the  Hebrews  had  left  Egypt,  and 
had  come  to  the  bounds  of  Palestine,  Moses,  a  wise 
man,  who  had  conducted  them  on  the  march,  died. 
The  government  devolved  on  Jesus,  son  of  Naue,  who 
led  the  people  into  Palestine,  and,  having  shown  in  the 
war  a  superhuman  valor,  took  possession  of  the  coun- 
try  It  was  then  inhabited  by  populous  na- 
tions, as  the  Gergesenes,  and  the  Jebusites,  and  others, 
whose  names  are  given  in  the  Hebrew  history.  This 
people,  when  they  saw  that  the  foreign  leader  was  in- 
vincible, leaving  their  paternal  seats,  departed  to  the 
neighbouring  country  of  Egypt.  Finding  there  no  con- 
venient place  of  setdement,  since  Egypt  was  of  old  a 
thickly  peopled  territory,  they  proceeded  to  Lybia, 
which,  having  built  many  cities,  they  occupied  as  far  as  to 

the  pillars  of  Hercules They  also  built  a  castle 

in  Numidia,  where  now  is  the  city  called  Tigisis.  There, 
near  to  a  great  fountain,  are  two  columns  of  white  stone, 
bearing  this  inscription  in  the  Phenician  language ;  '  We 
are  they  who  fled  from  before  the  face  of  Jesus  the 
robber,  the  son  of  JVaueJ"* — This  positive,  indepen- 

*  Procopius,  "  De  Bel.  Vand.,"  lib.  2,  cap.  10,  in  "  Corpus  Byzantine 
Historiffi"  (Edit  Venet,  1729),  Vol.  I.,  p.  400,  — Suidas  has  the  same 
account.     Joshua,  he  says,  "  expelled  all  the  kings  and  raighty  men  of 

those  nations,"   tlmts    ur'    aurcT  imxifttMh  ^'»   ^S    Tt^iai.iau   Aiyu^rau   «    ittti 

A.iSitiS  xari^uyet  tii  riif  fun    Af^ut  X'^Z"''' l^aii  T^tv^vyitris  rais  * A(pe9iSf 

rnt  ierifiov  aurut  Sx.^va,f  X''Z**i »»  '■^*l'  Xi^ivai;  itety^arpaftttoi  T^»  mirtxy, 

ii'  ^y  axi  rris  H-ccycctitlut  yiit  afxira*  riii  'A^^ixrit.  Kai  iiri  ftixi'  *''*  "'  *'"<'<'T" 
irXaxi;  l»  t5)  Nsua/S/a,  xi^iixtfirai  aura;  '   'H/ii7f  tv/A*  ^atectajti,  out  lS/«|i»  '\nffeus 

i  \tivTrt;.  Lexicon,  Art.  X«»«a».  —  Selden,  ("  De  Jure  Naturali  et  Genti 
urn"  &c.,  lib,  6,  cap.  ]3),  gives  an  extract  from  the  Jerusalem  Gemara, 
which  is  chiefly  valuable  for  its  bearing  on  the  same  point.  It  is  to  the 
following  effect;  "  Joshua,  before  the  Israelites  invaded  Palestine,  pro- 
posed three  tilings  by  letter  ;  that  they  who  preferred  to  flee,  should  flee  ; 
that  they  who  preferred  peace,  should  treat ;  and  that  they,  who  would 
have  war,  should  take  up  arms.  Accordingly,  the  Gergesenes,  believing 
in  God,  Jltd, betaking  themselves  to  .Africa" 


444  DEUTERONOMY   I.  1.  — XI.  31.  [LECT. 

dent  testimony  to  a  fact,  which  all  the  circumstances  of 
the  case  show  to  be  strongly  probable,  has  a  pecuUar 
interest  and  value. 

There  is  no  language  at  the  beginning  of  the  ninth 
chapter,  indicative  of  a  transition  from  the  discourse  on 
which  I  have  been  commenting,  to  another  now  begun  ;* 
for  aught  that  appears,  the  same  discourse  is  continued. 
Moses  warns  the  people  not  to  imagine,  that  any  suc- 
cesses they  might  obtain,  were  the  fruit  of  their  own 
valor,!  or  that  God  gave  them  these  successes  in  con- 
sequence of  any  desert  of  theirs  ;  J  and  now,  having 
prepared  the  way  for  greater  plainness  of  speech  than 
would  have  been  suitable  at  an  earlier  period  of  his  ad- 
dresses to  them,§  he  proceeds  to  rebuke  any  tendency 
to  an  arrogant  spirit,  by  recalling  the  painful  and  hum- 
bling memory  of  some  of  the  worst  instances  of  their 
intractableness  and  ingratitude,  ||  and  declaring  that  these 
were  but  specimens  of  a  spirit  which  had  always  seemed 
ready  to  break  forth,  on  any  insufficient  occasion,  from 
the  very  time  of  the  great  mercy  ^manifested  in  their 
behalf,  in  their  deliverance  from  Egyptian  bondage.il 
Yet,  notwithstanding  all  these  provocations,  he  says,  he 
had  never  ceased,  with  a  disinterested  earnestness,  to 
intercede  for  them ;  and  their  Divine  benefactor,  though 
greatly  incensed,  had  never  ceased  to  pardon.**  Still, 
Ood  was  waiting  to  be  gracious.  All  he  required  of 
them  Was  obedience  ;  but  it  must  be  an  obedience,  not 
of  outward  service,  but  of  the  heart.tt  He  appealed 
to  them  to  render  that  obedience,  by  the  memory  of 

*  With  Deut.  ix.  1,  compare  vi.  3,  4,  xii.  28.  f  ix.  3. 

J  ix.  4-6.  §  Compare  i.  26-46. 

II  ix.  8-12,  22,  23.  Compare  Ex.  xxxii.  (with  ray  remarks,  pp.  215- 
222) ;  Numb,  xi.,  xiii,,  xiv. 

IF  Deut.  ix.  7,  24.  ••  ix.  13  -  20,  25  -  x.  5. 

tt  X.  12, 13,  16,  20,  21. 


XVIII.]  DEUTERONOJTY  I.   1.  — XI.  31.  445 

his  past  kindnesses ;  for,  when  all  nations  were  alike 
his,  he  had  selected  theirs  to  be  the  object  of  his  pecu- 
liar care,  and  had  already  raised  them,  from  small  be- 
ginnings, to  be  a  numerous  people.*  He  appealed  to 
them  by  a  sense  of  his  impartial  justice,  which  weighed 
in  the  same  balance  the  lowly  and  the  great.f  He  ap- 
pealed to  them  by  past  manifestations  of  his  great  power, 
as  this  had  been  manifested  alternately  in  their  protec- 
tion and  their  punishment.|  And  finally,  he  appealed 
to  them  by  his  purposes  of  heavy  retribution,^  or  un- 
hmited  bounty, ||  for  the  future,  according  as  they  should 

*  Deut  X.  14, 15,  22.  .     .  f  x.  17,  18. 

txi.  1-9.  §xi.  16,  17. 

II  xi.  10-15,  18-25.  — With  ix.  18,  25,  compare  E.x.  xxxiv.  28.  —  ix. 
20,  has  no  parallel  in  Exodus.  —  I  do  not  think  that  ix.  22,  contradicts  my 
suggestion  (p.  340,  note  §)  respecting  Taberah  and  Kibroth-hattaavah 
being  different  names  of  the  same  place.  (Compare  Numb,  xxxiii.  17.) 
Moses  might  repeat  both  significant  names,  for  greater  emphasis,  though 
he  placed  another,  of  the  same  class,  between  them.  The  ancient 
versions,  imlike  ours,  translate  all  the  three  words.  —  Deut.  ix.  22  -  24, 
should  be  arranged  as  a  parenthesis,  so  as  to  preserve  the  connexion  be- 
tween 21  and  25  et  seq.  —  The  force  of  x.  1  -  5,  is  to  remind  the  Israelites 
with  what  peculiar  reverence  the  written  Decalogue,  now  in  the  ark,  in 
the  custody  of  tlie  Levites,  ought  to  be  regarded,  in  consideration  of  the 
manner  in  which  it  had  been  provided.  —  I  cannot  hesitate  to  regard  x. 
6,  7,  as  an  interpolation  ;  and  that,  too,  originating,  it  may  be  presumed, 
in  some  accident.  I  lay  no  stress  on  the  circumstance,  that  the  proper 
names  in  G,  apparently  the  same  with  those  in  Isumb.  xxxiii.  31,  are  here 
disposed  in  a  different  order ;  for  nothing  is  more  likely,  than  that  the 
Israelites,  in  the  course  of  their  long  wanderings,  should,  at  different  times, 
have  visited  the  same  spots,  taking  them  in  a  different  order.  But  tRey 
break  the  connexion  between  5  and  8,  which  otherwise  is  as  close  as 
possible  (compare  10) ;  nor  can  they  even  be  regarded  as  a  parenthesis, 
so  irrelevant  to  tlie  subject  is  the  matter  which  they  contain.  —  Verse  8, 
in  its  connexion  with  5  and  1 0,  determines  the  time,  when  a  definite  ar- 
rangement for  the  service  of  tlie  Levites  was  communicated  to  Moses,  to 
have  been  that  of  his  second  retirement  to  Mount  Sinai  ;  compare  p.  317, 
note  f.  They, were  appointed  to  "bear  the  ark"  (8)  in  which  (5)  the 
stone  tablets  were  deposited.  —  Verse  19  is  amoral  precept  for  the  people, 
parenthetically  introduced,  in  connexion  with  the  mention  (17,  18)  of 
God's  impartial  providence  ;  afler  which  (20),  the  course  of  the  argument 


446  DEUTERONOMY  I.  1.  — XL  31.  [LECT. 

prove  docile  or  incorrigible  ;  purposes  (as  I  understand) 
to  be  providentially  accomplished  in  what  we  call  the 
natural  consequences  of  obedience  or  disobedience  to 
a  law  perfectly  devised  to  insure  the  national  pros- 
perity. 

To  inforce  this  last  appeal  the  most  strongly  possible 
upon  the  people's  minds,  Moses  now  announces  his 
purpose  to  cause  them  to  constitute  themselves  a  party 
to  the  engagement  therein  implied,  by  invoking  on  them- 
selves, with  the  most  solemn  forms,  the  Divine  favor  or 
vengeance,  according  as  their  own  conduct  should  be. 
Referring  to  their  establishment  in  Canaan  as  an  event 
unquestionably  to  take  place,  though  not  till  after  he 
should  have  rested  from  his  labors,  (a  manner  of  refer- 

is  resumed.  —  "I  speak  not  with,  your  children,  which  have  not  known, 

and  which  have  not  seen his  miracles,  and  his  acts,  which  he  did 

in  the  midst  of  Egypt "  &c.  (xi.  2  -  7).  Whether  any,  besides  Caleb  and 
Joshua,  of  the  men  of  full  age,  who  came  out  of  Egypt,  survived  or  not, 
Moses  was  now  addressing  numbers,  who,  though  then  too  young  to  be 
enumerated  in  the  census,  were  old  enough  to  be  intelligent  observers  of 
the  prodigies  of  the  time. — "  The  earth  .....  swallowed  them  up,  and 
their  households,  and  their  tents,  and  all  the  substance  that  was  in  their 
possession  "  (6).  I  would  rather  understand  as  follows  ;  "swallowed  them 
up,  and  their  houses ;  yea,  their  tents,  and  [more]  all  their  property  [that 
was  in  their  tents].     See  pp.  356,  357,  note.  —  "The   land  of  Egypt, 

where  thou  sowedst  thy  seed,  and  wateredst  it  with  thy  foot "  ( 10) ; 

the  allusion  is  to  a  method  of  irrigation  in  Egypt,  water  being  drawn  for 
the  purpose  from  the  river.  Philo,  "  De  Confusione  Linguarum,"  (Op. 
Vol.  I.  p.  410,  Edit  Mang.,)  describes  machinery  for  this  use,  worked  with 
the  foot,  the  description  corresponding  with  the  modern  tread-mill.  —  "  / 
will  give  you  [it  is  Moses  who  speaks]  the  rain  of  your  land  in  his  due 
season  "  &c.,  "and  /  will  send  grass"  &c.  (14,  15) ;  that  is,  through  the 
natural  operation  of  the  wise  laws  which  I  give  you,  if  they  be  obeyed, 
the  rains  will  prove  seasonably  propitious,  causing  the  obedient  husband- 
man's labors  to  prosper.  —  "Take  heed  to  yourselves,  that  your  heart  be 

not  deceived, and  he  shut  up  the  heaven  that  there  be  no  rain, 

and  that  the  land  yield  not  her  fruit "  (16,  17);  that  is,  according  to  the 
simple  Hebrew  idiom,  —  that  the  rains  prove  to  be  no  seasonable,  no  pro- 
ductive rains ;  that  the  bounties  of  Providence  be  frustrated  by  that  want 
of  attention,  on  your  part,  to  my  laws,  which  would  make  your  toils  of 
cultivation  prosper. 


XVIII.]  DEUTERONOMY   I.  1.  — XI.  31.  447 

ence,  the  most  effectual  to  inspire  confidence  on  the 
part  of  those  addressed,)  he  directs,  that  then  their  first 
act  shall  be  this  solemn  rite  of  national  consecration.* 
But,  before  he  proceeds  to  specify  the  designed  for- 
malities,! he  presents  that  statement  of  parts  of  the 
Law  as  before  revealed,  with  additions  and  alterations, 
which  is  to  make  the  subject  of  tny  next  Lecture. 

•  Deut.xi.  26-31.  f  xxviL 


I 


448  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  [LECT. 


LECTURE    XIX, 

DEUTERONOMY   XL   32.  — XXVI.  19. 

Moses  recites  and  announces  Laws,  —  relating  to  Idolatry, — 
TO  Worship, — to  the  Religious  Revenues,  —  to  Distinctions 
OF  Food,  —  to  the  Festivals, —  to  the  Second  Tithe  and 
Firstlings,  —  to  the  Sabbatical  Year,  —  to  Slavery,  —  to  a 
Future  Monarchical  Gover;n-ment, — to  False  Teachers,  with 
A  Prediction  of  the  Great  Teacher  to  come, —  to  Rights  of 
Citizenship,  —  to  the  Customs  of  War,  —  to  Domestic  Rela- 
tions,—  TO  Usury,  —  to  Offices  of  Justice,  Humanity,  Cour- 
tesy, AND  Compassion,  —  to  Miscellaneous  Subjects, —  to 
Crimes,.  Processes,  and  Punishments.  — He  gives  Directions 
respecting  Offerings  to  be  made  aftbr,  th^  orderly  Settle- 
ment OF  THE  Country,  —  and  renews  his  Exhortations  to 
Obedience,  and  Assurances  op  the  Divine  Favor. 

In  fifteen  chapters  of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy,  be- 
ginning with  the  twelfth,  we  find  Moses  represented  as 
publicly  repeating,  with  or  without  modification,  various 
laws  which  had  been  previously  established,  and  for 
the  first  time  promulgating  others,  a  greater  or  less 
portion  of  which,  I  have  remarked,*  are  to  be  taken 
for  the  fruit  of  his  meditations  and'  experience,  and  the 
subject  of  revelations  to  him,  during  the  long  wander- 
ings in  the  wilderness.  A  general  remark,  to  be  made 
upon  the  collection  of  rules  here  brought  together,  is, 
that  they  are  of  a  character  corresponding  with  the 
occasion  to  which  the  record  refers  them.  They  are 
declared  to  have  been  addressed  to  "  all  Israel,"  —  to 
the  people  at  large ;  and  accordingly  rules  of  that  class, 
with  which  the  people  had  no  immediate  concern, — 
which  were  intended  for  a  directory  to  the  sacred  order 

*  See  p.  372. 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.   19.  449 

in  the  discharge  of  their  functions,  —  are  not  found 
embraced  in  the  collection.* 

In  the  account  which  I  am  to  give  of  these  laws,  (and 
in  which  I  shall  not  treat  of  their  principles,  except  as 
far  as  new  provisions  require  it,  having  done  this  already 
in  earlier  parts  of  the  discussion,)  it  will  be  convenient 
to  bring  together  those  which  treat  upon  the  same 
general  subject,  though  we  should  find  them  dispersed 
in  different  parts  of  Moses'  discourse.  They  were 
rehearsed  to  the  end  that  they  might  be  remembered 
and  obeyed.  It  was  not  necessary  to  this  end,  as  it 
would  have  been  in  the  recital  of  historical  facts,  that 
they  should  be  presented  in  a  determinate  order ; 
and  it  would  be  fruitless  to  inquire  why  Moses  has 
adopted  the  particular  arrangement  in  which  we  find 
them,  in  preference  to  any  other.  Nothing  is  more 
probable,  than  that  single  rules  took  their  places  succes- 
sively, as  they  chanced  to  occur  to  his  mind. 

The  great  subject,  however,  of  True  and  False  Wor- 
ship, of  idolatry  and  fealty  to  Jehovah,  is  placed,  as  we 
should  expect,  in  the  fore-ground,  in  a  repetition  of 
the  rule  respecting  the  destruction  of  the  monuments 
of  that  licentious  and  flagitious  form  of  heathenism, 
which  prevailed  in  Canaan,  as  soon  as  that  country 
should  be  possessed.!     Further  on,  a  caution  is  given 

*  Compare  Deut  xxiv.  8,  where  the  people  are  expressly  referred,  for 
instruction  in  the  provisions  relating  to  leprosy,  to  the  sacred  order,  to 
whom  the  administration  of  those  rules  had  been  committed  in  full  detail 
(compare  Lev.  xiii.  xiv.),  "  As  I  commanded  them,  so  shall  ye  observe  to 
do,"  is  all  that  is  said  to  the  people,  except  that,  to  make  them  more  ready 
to  submit  to  the  separation  which  the  priests  were  directed  to  enforce, 
they  are  reminded  (Deut  xxiv.  9),  that  Miriam  herself  had  been  subjected 
to  tlie  same  exaction,  and  this,  though  the  host  had  been  detained  upon  its 
march  for  the  purpose.  (Compare  Numb.  xii.  15.) — The  remark,  however, 
in  the  text,  is  not  to  be  taken  without  exception.     See  Deut.xviii.  6-8. 

f  Deut.  xi.  32 -xii.  3.  Compare  Ex.  xxxiv.  13;  Numb,  xxxiii.  52; 
Deut.  viL  5. — It  will  be  observed,  that  I  take  Deut  xi.  32  into  this 
division  of  the  book.    There  it  seems  to  me  to  belong.    As  arranged  in 

VOL.  I.  57 


450        DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.      [LECT. 

against  any  disposition,  after  the  power  of  the  ancient 
inhabitants  should  be  broken,  to  revive  their  senseless 
and  brutal  practices.*  Whoever,  among  the  people, 
shall  attempt  to  seduce  others  to  the  sin,  is  forthwith  to 
be  put  to  death  without  mercy,  however  artfully  he  may 
sustain  his  attempt  at  imposture  ;t  to  such  a  conspirator 
against  the  common  well-being,  the  closest  ties  of  blood 
and  friendship  are  to  afford  no  protection  from  the  swift 
vengeance  of  him,  on  whom  he  has  dared,  in  the  con- 
fidence of  intimacy,  to  try  his  baleful  arts ;  t  and  the 


the  received  division  of  chapters,  I  think  it  not  only  makes  a  very  frigid 
conclusion  of  the  first  part,  but  deprives  that  part  of  the  emphatic  conclu- 
sion, which  belongs  to  it,  in  ver^e  31.  On  the  other  hand,  arranged  as  I 
propose,  verse  32  makes  a  most  appropriate  opening  of  the  second  section. 
It  is  true,  that  the  words  "  this  day  "  are  capable  of  being  used  with  much 
latitude  ;  but  in  the  present  instance  I  understand  Moses  ^s  saying,  "  Ye 
shall  obser\"e  to  do  all  the  statutes  and  judgments  which  I  set  before  you 
*hi3  day"  as  well  as  what  I  have  commanded  at  other  times ;  and  then 
he  goes  on  to  exhibit  them. 

•  Deut  xiL  29-32.  This  is  a  new  rule,  e  majori  secvritate.  The 
occasion  for  it  probably  was  the  prevailing  notion,  which  might  beguile 
the  Israelites,  that  every  territory  had  its  patron  god,  without  whose  favor 
its  occupants  could  not  thrive.  Compare  2  Kings  xviL  26.  —  Deut.  xiv. 
1,  2;  compare  Lev.  xix.  27,  28,  and  my  note  thereupon. —  Deut  xvi.  21, 
22 ;  compare  Lev.  xxvi.  1 ;  1  Kings  xv.  13. 

f  Deut.  xiii.  1-5.  —  "If  there  arise  among  you  a  prophet"  &c.  (1,  2). 
Nothing  could  be  more  unfounded  than  to  imagine,  that  there  is  an  impli- 
cation here  of  the  actual  possibUity  of  a  false  teacher's  performing  a 
miracle,  or  uttering  a  prediction  with  supernatural  wisdom.  The  people 
are  warned  against  the  pretence  and  appearance  of  such  things,  —  against 
appeals  for  the  defence  of  false  doctrine,  to  tricks  pretending  to  be  mira- 
cles, or  to  prognostics  of  the  future,  with  which  (merely  because  they 
were  sagacious  anticipations,  or  lucky  guesses)  the  event  proves  to  cor- 
respond. The  words  ni'X  and  nsio  signify  a  sign;  something  observa- 
ble and  striking,  something  remarkable  and  surprising,  whether  miraculous 
or  not  The  Egyptian  wise  men  gave  signs  and  wonders  (pp.  119  et 
seq.)  in  the  same  general  sense  in  which  these  false  teachers  might  give 
them.  —  " The  Lord  your  God  proveth  you"  &.c.  (3);  look  upon  it  as  only 
a  trial,  which  God's  providence  has  permitted  to  come  upon  you,  and  use 
it  so  as  to  manifest  and  confirm  your  loyalty. 

X  xiii.  6-11.  But  the  criminal  counsellor  was  not  to  be  slain  privately, 
which  would  have  been  a  liberty  subject  to  extreme  abuse.    He  was  to  be 


*•' 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY   XL  32.  — XXVI.  19.  461 

city  which  has  suffered  itself  to  harbour  the  crime,  is  to 
be  made  the  subject  of  a  more  memorable  judgment ; 
not  only  are  its  inhabitants  to  be  put  to  the  sword,  their 
cattle  are  to  share  their  fate,  its  movables  are  to  be 
consumed  with  fire,  and  its  walls  and  dwellings  are  to 
be  razed  to  the  ground,  to  remain  thus  for  ever,  a 
warning  monument  of  desolation.*  Even  he  who  does 
no  more  than  offer  idolatrous  worship,  though  he  should 
design  it  to  be  done  in  secret,  is  to  be  led  forth,  as 
soon  as  solemnly  convicted,  to  public  execution;!  nor 
is  the  presence  of  any  of  the  pretended  practitioners 
of  magic,  and  those  other  kindred  arts,  which  connected 
themselves  with  heathen  beUef  and  worship,  to  be 
tolerated  within  the  holy  realm  of  Israel. t 

In  respect  to  Worship,  the  principal  regulations,  em- 
braced in  this  collection,  have  reference  to  that  altered 
condition  of  things,  in  which  the  people,  soon  to  be 
possessed  of  a  permanent  habitation,  might  have  a  per- 
manent place  of  resort  for  the  duties  of  their  religious 
ceremonial.  What  that  place  should  be,  Moses  does 
not  determine,^  perceiving,  probably,  that  a  premature 
decision  of  the  question  might  create  jealousy  among 
the  tribes,  and  that  circumstances  might  require  any 


informed  against  by  the  person  whom  he  had  solicited,  and  then  executed 
pursuant  to  a  judicial  sentence.  (Compare  9,  10,  with  p.  482.)  The 
Septuagint  reads,  more  expressly  to  this  point,  &myyiXt7t  wigJ  ahrtZ.  —  Per- 
haps (6)  the  law  dispensed  a  wife  or  child  from  informing. 

*  Deut.  xiii.  12-  18.  The  severe  provisions  in  this  passage,  extending 
even  to  the  destruction  of  animals  and  property,  with  the  strictest  prohibi- 
tion to  spare  any  thing,  not  only  tended  to  exasperate  the  sentiment,  which 
they  expressed,  of  abhorrence  of  the  crime  which  had  called  for  such 
vengeance,  but  they  secured  the  further  point,  that  a  city  should  not  be 
exposed  to  become  a  prey  to  the  cupidity  of  its  neighbours,  under  pre- 
tence of  punishing  its  sins.  —  All  the  provisions  in  this  chapter  are  new. 

t  xvu.  2-7. 

X  xviii.  9-14.    Compare  Ex.  xxiL  18 ;  Lev.  xix.  26,  31 ;  xx.  6,  27. 

§  xii.  5, 11, 14,21. 


452        DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.      [LECT. 

first  choice  which  he  should  make,  to  be  subsequently 
abandoned.  But  its  selection,  he  says,  will  afford 
opportunity,  and  impose  an  obligation,  for  greater  regu- 
larity in  the  services  of  worship,  than  had  hitherto  been 
observed.*  To  that  place  all  offerings  were  to  be 
brought ;  f  and  that  was  to  be  the  scene  of  a  festive  and 
charitable  liberality,  of  a  kind  which  is  now  first  men- 
tioned, t  In  one  respect,  however,  the  rigor  of  the  old 
rule  respecting  resort  to  the  place  of  the  national  wor- 
ship was  to  be  relaxed.  Some  weighty  reasons,  at 
least,  for  the  strictness  of  the  demand,  that  all  animals 
designed  for  food  should  be  brought  to  the  Tabernacle 
to  be  slaughtered,  being  now  superseded  by  the  change 
of  circumstances,  and  others  having  become  less  ur- 
gent, through  the  influence  of  the  habits  of  forty  years, 
permission  is  given  to  the  proprietor  to  slaughter  them 
henceforward  at  his  own  home,  if  the  place  where  the 
Tabernacle  was  pitched  was  so  remote  from  him,  that  a 
journey  to  it  for  the  purpose  would  be  attended  with 
inconvenience.§  The  prohibition  of  the  use  of  blood 
is  declared  to  have  application  to  this  case,  as  well  as 
to  others,  previously  treated. ||  The  rule  requiring  that 
victims  shall  be  perfect  in  their  kind  is  briefly  re- 
peated. H  The  Pagan  practice  of  offering  the  wages 
of  prostitution  as  a  consecrated  gift  is  condemned  as 

*  Deut.  xii.  8,  9.  t  xii.  4-7, 10-14,  26-28. 

X  xii.  17-19.  For  remarks  on  the  subject  here  introduced,  see  below, 
pp.  454-458. 

§  xii.  15,  20-22.  The  law  in  Lev.  xviL  1  -7,  is  here  repealed.  See 
pp.  252-254,  288.  —« The  unclean  and  the  clean  shall  eat  of  them  alike" 
(22) ;  which  they  could  not  do  if  the  animals  were  presented  as  a  sacri- 
fice.   Compare  Lev.  viL  21. 

II  Deut  xii.  16,  23-25.  Compare  Lev.  xvii.  10-14,  and  p.  289,  note  *. 
The  idea  referred  to  at  the  end  of  that  note,  entered  extensively  into 
ancient  forms  of  speech.  "  Purpuream  vomit  ille  animam,"  says  Virgil 
(^neid.  ix.  349). 

f  Deut  XV.  21 ;  xvii.  1.    Compare  Lev.  xxii.  19-25 ;  p.  296. 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.   19.  453 

an  abomination  in  Jehovah's  sight ;  *  and  the  Uberty  of 
making  vows,'  or  refraining  from  making  them,  together 
with  the  obligation  of  fulfilling  them  when  made,  is  again 
affirmed  in  the  same  tone  with  that  of  other  passages 
in  which  the  subject  has  been  treated.! 

In  respect  to  Religious  Revenues,  no  more  is  here 
done  than  to  refer  in  the  most  general  way  to  the 
established  provision  for  the  maintenance  of  the  sacred 
order ;  t  to  make  a  trifling  addition  to  the  priest's  per- 
quisites ;  §  and  to  direct,  that  if  any  Levite  should  be 
disposed  to  forsake  his  home  in  one  of  the  cities  of  his 
tribe,  and  devote  himself  to  a  perpetual  service  at  the 
Tabernacle,  he  should  be  entitled  to  a  like  support  with 
those  of  his  brethren,  who,  from  time  to  time,  were 
rendering  there  their  stated  temporary  service.  || 

The  rules  respecting  clean  and  unclean  animals  are 
repeated,  as  they  had  been  prescribed  in  the  book  of 
Leviticus.  H 

*  Deut.  xxiii.  18.  Compare  Lev.  xix.  29.  Respecting  this  practice  of 
ancient  idolaters,  and  of  the  Phenicians  among  others,  see  Spencer,  "  Do 
Legibus"  &c.,  lib.  2,  cap.  23,  §  1.  Haud  dubito,  quin  vocabulum  cants  de 
cyncKdo  [xJya(S«,  quasi  impudens  ut  caois]  sit  accipiendum;  confer  17. 
At  vide  Bochart,  "  Hierozoicon,"  part  1,  lib.  2,  cap.  56. 

f  xxiii   21  -23.     Compare  Lev.  xxvii.  2;  Numb.  xxx. ;  pp.  308,  397. 

X  Deut.  xviii.  1,  2,  5. 

§  xviii.  3,  4.  "The  two  cheeks,  and  the  maw,"  "and  the  first  of  the 
fleece  of  thy  sheep,"  are  donatives  not  hitherto  mentioned. 

II  xviiu  6-8.  Moses  dictated  no  arrangements  respecting  a  succession 
of  the  Levites  in  the  duty  of  serving  at  the  Tabernacle  ;  but  of  course 
he  anticipated  that  they  would  presendy  be  made,  since,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  Tabernacle  was  to  be  served,  and,  on  the  other,  the  Levites 
were  to  have  their  homes  in  forty-eight  cities. 

H  xiv.  3-21 ;  compare  Lev.  xi.  1-23. — There  are,  however,  the  three 
following  slight  differences  between  the  two  records.  In  Deut.  xiv.  4,  5, 
as  if  to  suggest  some  instances  before  the  rule  is  named,  a  few  animals 
falling  within  it  are  specified,  of  which  we  find  nothing  in  Leviticus.  In 
xiv.  13,  the  word  nnn ,  rendered  in  our  version  "  glede,"  is  added  to  the 
list  in  the  parallel  passage ;  a  few  manuscripts,  however,  and  the  Sa- 
maritan copy,  omit  it  The  four  exceptions  in  Lev.  xi.  22,  to  the  prohibi- 
tion of  "  flying  creeping  things,"  do  not  occur  in  Deuteronomy ;  nor  (with 


454        DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.      [LECT. 

If  I  understand  correctly  the  passage  in  which  the 
three  great  annual  Festivals  are  briefly  mentioned,  the 
worshipper,  who  shall  have  repaired  to  the  Tabernacle, 
in  pursuance  of  earlier  directions,  to  observe  the  Pass- 
over,* is  now  informed,  (probably  on  account  of  the 
season  of  the  year,  when  his  presence  might  be  ur- 
gently required  at  home,)  that,  from  the  morning  after 
the  paschal  lamb  has  been  slain,  he  is  dispensed  from 
further  attendance ;  while,  at  the  feast  of  Pentecost  and 
Tabernacles,  he  was  bound  to  remain,  and  let  "  the  Le- 
vite,  the  stranger,  and  the  fatherless,  and  the  widow," 
share  with  his  own  family,  from  high  to  low,  in  a  liberal 
dispensation  of  his  Peace  Offerings.! 


a  single  exception,  in  Deut  xiv.  21,  compare  Lev.  xi.  39,  40)  is  the  re- 
lated subject,  treated  in  Lev.  xi.  24-43,  there  pursued ;  the  object  naturally 
being,  as  we  should  suppose,  in  a  spoken  address,  rather  to  present  the 
principal  features  of  such  a  subject,  than  to  exhaust  it.  —  "  Thou  shalt  not 
seethe  a  kid  in  its  mother's  milk  "  (21).  The  use  of  this  precept  (com- 
pare Ex.  xxiii.  19 ;  xxxiv.  26)  is  not  apparent.  The  best  sustained  ex- 
position appears  to  me  to  be  that  of  Spencer,  who  represents  it  ("  De 
Legibus  "  &c.,  lib.  2,  cap.  8,  §  2)  as  having  reference  to  a  heathen  custom 
of  propitiating  the  favor  of  deities  who  presided  over  cultivation,  by 
sprinkling  over  the  fields  the  milk  of  a  goat,  in  which  the  flesh  of  its 
young,  which  they  ate,  had  been  boiled ;  but  it  must  be  owned  that  his 
authorities  to  this  point  (or  rather  his  authority,  "  vetus  Karaita  anonymus  ") 
are  less  satisfactory  than  in  many  other  cases.  The  view  of  Michaelis 
("Commentary"  &c.,  book  4,  chap.  4,  part  1,  art.  205)  is  peculiar.  He 
thinks,  that  here  is  a  prohibition  of  the  use  of  butter,  to  the  end  of  endear- 
ing the  Israelites  the  more  to  Palestine;  oil  (which  would  furnish  the 
substitute)  being  a  large  product  of  that  country.  (Compare  p.  242  above, 
note  tt.)  He  says  that  the  Jews  have  always  understood  this  law  as  forbid- 
ding the  use  of  butter.  If  it  be  so,  the  fact  is  important ;  but  I  have 
never  happened  to  meet  with  that  statement  elsewhere,  and  cannot  recon- 
cile it  with  the  fact,  that  the  Jewish  commentators,  as  well  as  the  Chris- 
tian, have  sought  other  solutions  of  the  text;  e.  g.  Maimonides,  "More 
Nebochim,"  pars  3,  cap.  48. 

*  Ex.  xxiii.  17 ;  xxxiv.  23 ;  compare  p.  199. 

f  Deut.  xvi.  1  - 17 ;  compare  Lev.  xxiii ;  Numb,  xxviii.,  xxix.  —  I  can- 
not admit  the  correctness  of  the  inference  drawn  from  verses  5,  6 ; 
viz.  that  the  paschal  lamb  must  be  eaten  nowhere  but  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  Tabernacle.    This  solemnity  was  undoubtedly  in  its  whole 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XL  32.  — XXVI.  19.  465 

Upon  the  uses  of  the  annual  Festivals,  as  occasions 
of  patriotic  festivity,  and  of  private  hospitality  and  be- 
neficence, I  made  some  remarks,  at  a  previous  stage 
of  our  inquiries.*  From  part  of  the  discourse  before 
us,  we  learn,  that  they  were  to  be  made  to  serve  these 
uses  the  better,  through  an  institution  which  has  not 
before  been  mentioned.  Independently  of  the  contri- 
butions for  the  maintenance  of  the  sacred  order,  of 
which  we  have  read  in  the  previous  books,  and  which, 

original  spirit,  an  institution  for  domestic  observance  (Ex.  xii.  1-28); 
nor  ought  we  to  admit,  without  cogent  reasons,  the.  idea  of  such  a  de- 
parture, as  is  supposed,  from  the  primitive  plan,  especially  when  it  is 
considered  what  numbers  must,  from  various  causes,  have  been  prevented 
from  repairing  to  the  Tabernacle,  and  how  severely,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  omission  was  condemned.  (Numb.  ix.  13.)  Sacrifices  were  required 
to  be  presented  at  the  Tabernacle.  But  the  paschal  lamb  was  in  no 
proper  sense  a  sacrifice.  No  part  of  it  was  presented  to  be  consumed 
upon  the  altar.  A  precept,  too,  in  the  immediate  context,  distinctly  inti- 
mates, that  the  ceremony  in  question  was  to  be  observed  throughout  the 
Israelitish  borders ;  "  there  shall  be  no  leavened  bread  seen  with  thee  in  all 
ihy  coasts''^  (4).  Accordingly,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  understand  "the  pass- 
over  "  spoken  of  in  verse  5,  as  well  as  that  in  verse  2  (the  latter  expressly 
declared  to  be  of  the  flock  and  the  herd,  which  the  proper  passover  could 
not  be),  to  denote  whatever  "free-will  offering"  (10)  the  worshipper 
should,  at  the  Passover  season,  see  fit  to  present.  (Compare  2  Ghron. 
xxxv.  6-11.)  Regulations  of  the  Passover  proper  (3, 4)  are  very  naturally 
introduced  in  the  connexion,  but  ought  to  be  distinguished  by  being 
thrown  into  a  parenthesis.  Verse  5  then  connects  with  verse  2 ;  and 
verses  G  and  7  I  propose  to  divide  as  follows ;  viz.  "  But  at  the  place  which 
the  Lord  thy  God  shall  choose  to  place  his  name  in,  there  shalt  thou 
sacrifice  the  passover.  [This  subject  finished,  another  now  begins.]  At 
even,  at  the  going  down  of  the  sun,  was  [there  is  no  "af "  in  the  original] 
the  season  that  thou  camest  forth  out  of  Egypt,  and  [or  so]  thou  shalt 
[then]  roast  and  eat  [the  original  has  no  accusative  noun  or  pronoun  here, 
but  no  Jew  could  fail  from  the  context  to  supply  the  ellipsis  with  the 
paschal  lamb]  in  the  place  which  the  Lord  thy  God  shall  choose  [where 
the  whole  context  supposes  tlie  person  addressed  to  be,  else  he  could 
not  sacrifice  "  of  the  flock  and  the  herd,"] ;  and  [having  done  this]  thou 
mayest  turn  in  the  morning  [after],  and  go  unto  thy  tents  [the  protracted 
largesses  of  the  other  seasons  (10-17)  not  being  required  at  this], — 
Again;  njna  (6)  maybe  rendered  festival  as  well  as  season;  and  then  we 
should  read  "  At  even  &c.  is  the  festival,  or  celebration,  of  thy  departure 
from  Egypt." 
*  See  pp.  200,  201,  246. 


4- 

4 


458  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.   19.  [LECT. 

In  connexion  with  this  subject  of  a  Second  Tithe, 
occurs  the  mention  of  Firstling  animals  as  destined 
to  a  similar  use.  We  have  before  read  of  an  assign- 
ment of  the  first-born  of  animals  to  make  a  part  of  the 
sacerdotal  revenues  ;  and  the  question,  which  arises  from 
a  comparison  of  these  different  regulations,  we  are 
unable  confidently  to  answer,  from  the  very  cursory 
manner,  in  which  that  now  under  our  notice  is  pre- 
sented. The  commonly  received  interpretation,  and 
one  having  much  probability  to  recommend  it  is,  that,  in 
this  case,  as  in  that  of  Tithes,  after  the  legal  contribu- 
tion had  been  made  for  the  priests  and  Levites,  a  second 
similar  deduction  was  made,  agreeably  to  ancient  usage, 
from  what  remained  with  the  proprietor,  for  festive  and 
charitable  uses,  and  that  the  name  Firstlings,  in  the 
latter  instance,  denoted  the  animals  next  in  age  to  those 
belonging  to  the  religious  revenue.* 

therefore  the  more  effectually,  the  excellent  office  of  our  modem  inven- 
tions of  Cattle  Shows  and  Fairs  ;  for,  when  farmers  from  all  the  districts 
brought  their  products  to  one  place,  comparison  and  emulation  could  not 
fail  to  follow.  Perhaps  it  would  not  be  going  too  far  to  suppose,  that  we 
have  here  one  of  the  reasons  for  the  strict  prohibition  (compare  Lev.  xxvul 
32,  33)  of  a  pecuniary  commutation  of  animals,  belonging  to  the  revenue 
of  First  Tithes. 

*  Deut  xii.  6,  7,  17 ;  xiv.  23;  xv.  19-23.  Compare  Ex.  xxxiv.  19,  20  ; 
Lev.  xxvii.26;  Numb,  xviii.  15-19.  —  If  this  Firstling  had  any  physical  de- 
fect, it  was  not  to  betaken  to  the  Tabernacle,  but  to  be  eaten  at  the  propri- 
etor's dwelling  (Deut.  xv.  21, 22 ;  compare  p.  296). — Rosenmiiller  approves 
the  view,  that  these  Second  Firstlings  were  female  animals  ("  Scholia,"  on 
xii.  17).  But  he  must  have  overlooked  xv.  19.  —  I  see  no  objection  to  the 
common  interpretation ;  on  the  contrary,  in  our  small  acquaintance  with 
the  subject,  I  think  it  may  be  reasonably  taken  for  the  true  one.  Never- 
theless, I  have  been  surprised  to  find  nowhere  any  consideration  of  the 
question,  whether  here  may  not  be  an  instance  of  the  repeal  of  an  early 
provision,  and  the  transfer  of  the  property  concerned,  to  a  different  use 
relating  to  the  public  good,  the  priests  being  still  allowed  (xviii.  4)  to  re- 
tain the  first-fruits  of  vegetable  products.  (Compare  Ex.  xxiL  29, 30 ;  xxiiL 
19.)  And  still  another  question  occurs  ;  viz.  May  it  not  have  been,  that, 
though  the  Firstlings,  agreeably  to  what  we  have  before  read,  were  a  per- 
quisite of  the  priests,  the  priest  who  received,  and  the  proprietor  wJio  present- 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.   19.  459 

The  institution  of  the  Sabbatical  year  is  here  brought 
to  view,  in  order  to  attach  to  it  the  new  provision,  that, 
on  that  year,  the  payment  of  debts  should  not  be  en- 
forced ;  not  that  their  obhgation  should  then  be  dis- 
charged, but  that,  through  a  season,  during  which  the 
Israelitish  proprietor,  from  whom  debts  were  due,  was 
divested,  by  the  Law,  of  the  customary  income  from 
his  land,  it  should  be  suspended,  as  was  reasonable,  for 
such  as  had  not  other  resources.  But  as  it  was  not 
designed  that  the  regulation  should  extend  any  further 
than  the  just  occasion  for  it,  it  was  declared  to  have 
no  application  to  the  opulent,  nor  to  foreigners,  who, 
being  incapable  of  holding  Mnd  in  the  country,  suffered, 
on  the  Sabbatical  year,  no  abridgment  of  their  means. 
It  is  interesting  to  remark  how  provisions,  mentioned  in 
different  places,  thus  correspond  to,  and  imply  one 
another,  without  any  express  reference  to  the  fact  of 
this  mutual  fitness.* 

The  Law  delivered  on  Mount  Sinai  had  recognised 

ed  them,  were  in  the  habit  of  regaling  on  them  together,  or  enjoying  them 
jointly  by  some  mutually  satisfactory  arrangement  ?  At  least,  no  direc- 
tions are  given  concerning  them,  limiting  their  use,  like  that  of  some 
offerings,  to  the  priests ;  compare  p.  255.     But  this  is  less  probable. 

*  Deut.xv.  1-11 ;  compare  Ex.  xxiii  10,  11  ;  Lev.  xxv.  1-7;  p.  301. 
—  Dathe  well  proposes  in  verse  2  to  read  nt9n ,  instead  of  nt?n ,  so  as  to 
render,  instead  of  "  shall  release  i7,"  which  gives  no  translation  of  the 
word  "IT ,  "  shall  withhold  [or  suspend]  his  hand,"  shall  not  seize  upon 
the  debtor,  for  the  time  being.  So  in  verse  3,  though  Dathe  does  not 
pursue  the  thought,  MOE^ri  should  be  construed  as  the  second  person,  and 
nn'^  as  the  accusative.  — "  Save  when  there  shall  be  no  poor  [or,  save 
when  he  shall  not  be  a  poor  man]  among  you"  (4) ;  a  plain  intimation  that 
the  regulation  was  only  for  their  benefit — Verse  3  shows  a  Stop  Law 
only  to  have  been  intended,  and  not  a  final  discharge  of  contracts  ;  for  it 
would  be  quite  superfluous  to  say,  that  the  occurrence  of  the  Sabbatical 
year  was  not  to  cancel  debts  from  foreigners.  Nor  do  verses  7,  9  intimate 
any  thing  to  the  contrary ;  a  niggardly  person  would  naturally  be  disin- 
clined to  give  a  credit,  the  obligation  of  which  was  to  be  suspended  over 
a  year  close  at  hand. 


460         DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  10.      [LECT. 

the  right  of  holding  Hebrews  as  Slaves,  or  rather  (as 
the  arrangement  was,  from  the  first,  in  respect  to  males) 
as  apprentices,  for  in  no  case  could  their  involuntary 
servitude  be  prolonged  beyond  the  period  of  seven  years. 
If  the  Hebrew  had  been  married  before  he  entered 
upon  his  service,  his  wife  became  free  along  with  him. 
If  he  had  received  a  fellow  slave  in  marriage,  and  if, 
when  the  time- for  his  emancipation  came,  he  was  too 
much  attached  to  his  family  and  his  master  to  wish  to 
use  his  privilege,  he  might  then,  in  the  presence  of 
magistrates  (so  as  to  guard  against  fraud  on  the  master's 
part),  go  through  a  ceremony,  by  which  he  devoted 
himself  to  permanent  servitude.  A  female  slave,  on 
the  contrary,  was  liable  to  be  retained  permanently  in 
that  relation ;  but,  if  her  master  had  received  her  with  a 
view  to  espouse  her  to  himself,  or  to  his  son,  she  had 
a  right  to  the  treatment  of  a  wife  or  a  daughter,  or  else 
to  her  freedom;  she  might  not  be  transferred  to  any 
other  purchaser.  A  later  rule,  recorded  in  Leviticus, 
gave  the  Hebrew^  servant  his  freedom  in  the  Jubilee 
year,  even  if  his  seven  years  of  service  had  not  then 
expired,  along  with  the  further  privilege  of  demanding 
the  manumission  of  his  family ;  and  the  emancipation 
of  the  Jubilee  w^as  at  the  same  time  extended  to  females, 
the  Law  declaring,  that  only  foreigners  shall  be  subject 
to  be  "  bond-men  and  bond-maids  for  ever."  *  With 
the  advantage  of  this  preparation,  the  Law  in  Deuter- 
onomy proceeds  to  make  still  more  generous  provisions. 
It  ordains,  that  the  right  of  emancipation,  after  six  years' 
service,  shall  be  extended  to  the  female  slave,  and  that, 
when  manumitted,  none  shall  be  sent  away  destitute, 
so  as  to  be  exposed  to  want  or  temptation.  "Thou 
shalt  furnish  him  liberally,"  it  is  said,  "  out  of  thy  flock, 

*  Ex.  xxi.  1-11 ;  Lev.  xxv.  39-46.  —  In  Ex.  xxi.  8,  instead  of  "be  re- 
deemed," the  rendering  should  be,  go  free. 


^'■ 


XIX.  ]  DEUTERONOMY   XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  461 

and  out  of  thy  floor,  and  out  of  thy  wine-press ;  of  that 
wherewith  the  Lord  thy  God  hath  blessed  thee  shall 
thou  give  unto  him."  * 

In  one  remarkable  passage,  Moses,  looking  forward  to 
the  time,  when,  under  the  influence  of  the  example  of 
surrounding  nations,  and  other  influences  always  at  work 
in  society,  the  Jews  would  be  led  to  the  establishment 
of  a  Monarchical  Government,  takes  care  to  exhibit  for 
their  use,  whenever  that  important  crisis  should  come, 
some  of  the  principles  upon  which  the  change  might  be 
made  with  safety.  The  person  elevated  to  the  throne, 
must  be  one  enjoying  the  Divine  approbation;  he  must 
be  of  native,  and  by  no  means  of  foreign  birth ;  and  in 
the  enjoyment  of  his  high  trust,  he  must  understand,  that 
he  is  not  to  imitate  the  hurtful  luxury,  pomp,  and  ambi- 

*  Deut.  XV.  12-18.  —  "The  seventh  year,"  of  which  this  passage 
treats,  is  clearly  the  seventh  year  of  the  slave's  own  service,  (compare  12, 
18,)  and  not  the  periodically  recurring  Sabbatical  year  spoken  of  just 
before ;  the  mention  of  which,  however,  naturally  suggested  it,  as  having- 
a  certain  similarity.  —  The  boring  of  the  ears  (xv.  17,  compare  Ex.  xxi.  6), 
was  anciently  a  sign  of  servitude  in  several  nations ;  see,  e.  g.  Juvenal, 
Sat.  1, 1.  102.  It  has  been  suggested,  that  Moses,  by  insisting  on  this 
form,  designed  to  attach  a  mean  association  to  the  wearing  of  ear-rings, 
and  so  to  discourage  it,  —  amulets,  connected  with  heathen  superstitions, 
being  carried  about  the  person  in  this  way ;  and  the  fact,  tliat  he  appears 
to  have  gone  somewhat  out  of  his  way  (if  I  may  so  speak)  to  repeat  the 
direction,  gives  a  degree  of  probability  to  this  remark.  —  If  the  question 
be  asked,  why,  in  Lev.  xxv.  47-55,  the  right  of  the  next  of  kin  to  redeem 
his  friend  to  freedom  is  spoken  of  with  reference  to  the  Jubilee  year,  and 
not  equally  to  the  conclusion  of  seven  years  of  service,  I  reply,  1.  That 
the  Jubilee  is  there  the  main  subject,  and  that  accordingly  it  would  be 
irrelevant  to  mention  a  kinsman's  rights,  incident  to  any  otlier  period, 
supposing  such  to  exist ;  2.  That  as  an  Israelite,  sold  into  servitude,  must 
first  have  alienated  his  property,  he  would  probably,  for  a  general  rule, 
wish  to  prolong  his  servitude,  till  the  Jubilee  should  come  round  to  restore 
it,  since  he  would  have  nothing  to  live  upon  meanwhile  (compare  41); 
unless,  indeed,  his  kinsman  should  be  disposed  (25)  to  redeem  his  estate 
as  well  as  his  person,  in  which  case  the  price  of  the  former,  at  least, 
which  would  probably  be  much  greater,  must  be  calculated  with  reference 
to  tlie  distance  of  the  Jubilee.    (Compare  15,  16.) 


462  DEUTERONOMY   XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  [LECT. 

tion  of  surrounding  monarchs;  but,  having  a  constant 
view  to  the  promotion  of  the  national  welfare  and  great- 
ness, by  carrying  out  the  principles  upon  which  the 
nation  was  founded,  he  must,  on  his  accession,  make  a 
copy  of  the  Law  for  his  frequent  use  and  meditation,  in 
order  to  be  the  more  familiar  with  its  requisitions,  and 
to  be  reminded  of  the  fact,  that  he  was  but  one  of  the 
people,  raised  above  them  only  by  the  possession  of 
peculiar  power  for  their  service.* 

*  Deut  xvii,  14-20.  —«  Whom  the  Lord  thy  God  shall  choose  "  (15). 
Choose,  how  ?  By  direct  declaration  of  his,  through  a  prophet,  or  other- 
■wise,  say  the  commentators.  But,  without  much  better  proof  than  I  have 
seen  adduced,  I  cannot  admit  the  idea  that  such  a  succession  of  miracu- 
lous divine  communications  on  this  subject  was  in  Moses'  thought  '2  in3 
frequently  means,  he.  delighted  in,  he  approved  (compare  Is.  i.  29 ;  xiv.  1 ; 
Zech.  i.  17;  iii.  2;  Prov.  i.  29;  iii.  31);  and,  thus  understood,  the  precept 
■will  be,  to  appoint  for  king  a  good  and  devout  man,  such  a  man  as  God 
may  be  believed  to  regard  with  complacency.  But  I  incline  strongly 
to  think,  that  we  have  here  a  direction,  that  the  monarchy  shall  be  elec- 
tive, and  not  hereditary ;  The  king,  whom  ye  shall  set  over  you,  from  time 
to  time,  shall  not  be  he  who  is  simply  his  father's  son,  but  he  whom  God  [in 
his  providence]  shall  have  designated,  shall  have  presented  to  your  view, 
as  the  worthiest.  Verse  20  oflfers  no  contradiction  to  this  view.  Its  sense 
is  naturally  understood  to  be,  that  the  king's  good  conduct  will  attach  the 
people  to  his  family,  and  dispose  them  to  give  the  succession  to  one  of 
them.  —  "  One  from  among  thy  brethren  shalt  thou  set  king  over  thee  " 
(15);  besides  reasons  for  this  rule,  having  equal  application  to  other  na- 
tions, a  foreigner  was  obviously  not  to  be  trusted  with  such  an  influence 
as  the  throne  would  give,  over  a  people,  whose  consecration  to  Jehovah 
was  of  such  a  peculiar  kind.  —  "  He  shall  not  multiply  horses,  nor  cause  the 
people  to  return  to  Egypt,"  &c.  (16).  In  obtaining  supplies  of  horses, 
the  Israelites  would  have  been  led  to  a  hurtful  intercourse  with  Egypt, 
where  they  were  raised  in  great  numbers  (1  Kings  x.  28,  29 ;  2  Chron.  xii. 
2,  3).  On  the  other  hand,  cavalry  in  tlie  mountainous  country  of  Palestine 
was  not  wanted  for  defence,  and  it  might  tempt  to  wars  of  conquest. 
Also,  for  their  necessary  uses,  the  ox  and  the  ass,  whose  maintenance  ia 
far  more  economical,  sufficed  the  Jews;  and  the  absence  of  the  horse 
enabled  their  country  to  support  a  much  larger  population.  —  "  Neither 
shall  he  multiply  wives  to  himself,  that  his  heart  turn  not  away"  (17); 
that  is,  lest  he  come  under  the  influence  of  idolatrous  women  (compare 
1  Kiags  xi,  1).  By  multiplying  wives,  we  are  not  to  understand  having 
more  than  one ;  (the   high-priest,  we  are  told  (2  Chron.  xxiv.  3),  the 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY   XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  463 

But  a  far  more  interesting  prospect  of  the  future 
than  this,  I  conceive  to  have  been  opened  by  Moses  in 
another  passage.  After  urging  those  admonitions  against 
the  pretended  arts  of  enchantment,  'divination,  and  the 
like,  which  came  under  our  notice  in  connexion  with 
the  subject  of  idolatry,*  he  goes  on  to  speak,  if  I  in- 
terpret him  correctly,  of  that  future  revelation  (possessed 
by  us  in  Chi'istianity),  destined  to  consummate  the  work 
of  a  moral  renovation  of  the  world,  of  which  only  the 
first  step  had  been  taken  by  his  own  labors.  Having 
cautioned  the  people  against  the  impostures  of  those 
foreigners,  whose  pretensions  to  intercourse  with  the 
spiritual  world  were  connected  with  the  falsehoods  and 
follies  of  heathen  belief  and  practice,  I  understand  him 
as  proceeding  to  give  the  assurance,  (which  the  con- 
nexion naturally  prompted,)  that  God  would  take  care, 
that  whatever  communications  of  a  supernatural  charac- 
ter it  was  best  they  should  have,  should,  in  his  own 
good  time,  be  conveyed  to  them  through  one  of  their 
own  number,  as  those  already  received  by  them  had 
been ;  and  that,  in  fact,  God  had  made  known  to  him, 
at  the  time  of  the  first  promulgation  of  the  Law,  that 
such  was  his  purpose.  "  I  will  raise  them  up,"  he 
had  said,  "  a  prophet  from  among  their  brethren  like 
unto  thee,  and  will  put  my  words  in  his  mouth,  and  * 
he  shall  speak  unto  them  all  that  I  shall  command  him." 
—  I  am  aware  to  what  an  extent  this  language  of 
Moses  has  been  understood  as  a  reference,  not  to  the 
founder  of  the  future,  better  dispensation  in  particular, 

authorized  expounder  of  the  Law,  gave  two  wives  to  king  Joash ;)  the 
king  was  forbidden  to  maintain  a  numerous  Harem,  after  the  oriental 
manner,  to  his  own  harm,  and  the  wide  injury  of  his  subjects  through  the 
example.  —  "Neither  shall  he  greatly  multiply  to  himself  silver  and  gold" 
(17);  the  lust  of  which  would  lead  to  extortion,  while  their  possession 
might  enable  him  to  rear  a  despotism. 
*  See  p.  451. 


462  DEUTERONOMY   XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  [LECT. 

tion  of  surrounding  monarchs;  but,  having  a  constant 
view  to  the  promotion  of  the  national  welfare  and  great- 
ness, by  carrying  out  the  principles  upon  which  the 
nation  was  founded,  he  must,  on  his  accession,  make  a 
copy  of  the  Law  for  his  frequent  use  and  meditation,  in 
order  to  be  the  more  familiar  with  its  requisitions,  and 
to  be  reminded  of  the  fact,  that  he  was  but  one  of  the 
people,  raised  above  them  only  by  the  possession  of 
peculiar  power  for  their  service.* 

♦  Deut  xvii.  14-20.— "Whom  the  Lord  thy  God  shall  choose"  (15). 
Choose,  how  ?  By  direct  declaration  of  his,  through  a  prophet,  or  other- 
wise, say  the  commentators.  But,  without  much  better  proof  than  I  have 
seen  adduced,  I  cannot  admit  the  idea  that  such  a  succession  of  miracu- 
lous divine  communications  on  this  subject  was  in  Moses'  thought  '2  "^ns 
frequently  means,  he  delighted  in,  he  approved  (compare  Is.  i.  29 ;  xiv.  1 ; 
Zech.  i.  17;  iii.  2;  Prov.  i.  29;  iii.  31);  and,  thus  understood,  the  precept 
will  be,  to  appoint  for  king  a  good  and  devout  man,  such  a  man  as  God 
may  be  believed  to  regard  with  complacency.  But  I  incline  strongly 
to  think,  that  we  have  here  a  direction,  that  the  monarchy  shall  be  elec- 
tive, and  not  hereditary ;  The  king,  whom  ye  shall  set  over  you,  from  time 
to  time,  shall  not  be  he  who  is  simply  his  father's  son,  but  he  whom  God  [in 
his  providence]  shall  have  designated,  shall  have  presented  to  your  view, 
as  the  worthiest.  Verse  20  oflFers  no  contradiction  to  this  view.  Its  sense 
is  naturally  understood  to  be,  that  the  king's  good  conduct  will  attach  the 
people  to  his  family,  and  dispose  them  to  give  the  succession  to  one  of 
them.  —  "  One  from  among  thy  brethren  shalt  thou  set  king  over  thee  " 
(15);  besides  reasons  for  this  rule,  having  equal  application  to  otherna- 
tions,  a  foreigner  was  obviously  not  to  be  trusted  with  such  an  influence 
as  the  throne  would  give,  over  a  people,  whose  consecration  to  Jehovah 
was  of  such  a  peculiar  kind.  —  "He  shall  not  multiply  horses,  nor  cause  the 
people  to  return  to  Egypt,"  &c.  (16).  In  obtaining  supplies  of  horses, 
the  Israelites  would  have  been  led  to  a  hurtful  intercourse  with  Egypt, 
where  they  were  raised  in  great  numbers  (1  Kings  x.  28,  29;  2  Chron.  xii. 
2,  3).  On  the  other  hand,  cavalry  in  tlie  mountainous  country  of  Palestine 
was  not  wanted  for  defence,  and  it  might  tempt  to  wars  of  conquest 
Also,  for  their  necessary  uses,  the  ox  and  the  ass,  whose  maintenance  is 
far  more  economical,  sufficed  the  Jews ;  and  the  absence  of  the  horse 
enabled  their  country  to  support  a  much  larger  population.  —  "  Neither 
shall  he  multiply  wives  to  himself,  that  his  heart  turn  not  away  "  (17) ; 
that  is,  lest  he  come  under  the  influence  of  idolatrous  women  (compare 
1  Kings  xi.  1).  By  muUiplyijig  wives,  we  are  not  to  understand  having 
more  than  one ;  (tlie   high-priest,  we  are  told  (2  Chron.  xxiv.  3),  the 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  —  XXVI.  19.  463 

But  a  far  more  interesting  prospect  of  the  future 
than  this,  I  conceive  to  have  been  opened  by  Moses  ui 
another  passage.  After  urging  those  admonitions  against 
the  pretended  arts  of  enchantment,  divination,  and  the 
like,  which  came  under  our  notice  in  connexion  with 
the  subject  of  idolatry,*  he  goes  on  to  speak,  if  I  in- 
terpret him  correctly,  of  that  future  revelation  (possessed 
by  us  in  Christianity),  destined  to  consummate  the  work 
of  a  moral  renovation  of  the  world,  of  which  only  the 
first  step  had  been  taken  by  his  own  labors.  Having 
cautioned  the  people  against  the  impostures  of  those 
foreigners,  whose  pretensions  to  mtercourse  with  the 
spiritual  world  were  connected  with  the  falsehoods  and 
follies  of  heathen  belief  and  practice,  I  understand  him 
as  proceeding  to  give  the  assurance,  (which  the  con- 
nexion naturally  prompted,)  that  God  would  take  care, 
that  whatever  communications  of  a  supernatural  charac- 
ter it  M'as  best  they  should  have,  should,  in  his  own 
good  time,  be  conveyed  to  them  through  one  of  their 
own  number,  as  those  already  received  by  them  had 
been ;  and  that,  in  fact,  God  had  made  known  to  him, 
at  the  time  of  the  first  promulgation  of  the  Law,  that 
such  was  his  purpose.  "  I  will  raise  them  up,"  he 
had  said,  "  a  prophet  from  among  their  brethren  like 
unto  theCf  and  will  put  my  words  in  his  mouth,  and  * 
he  shall  speak  unto  them  all  that  I  shall  command  him." 
—  I  am  aware  to  what  an  extent  this  language  of 
Moses  has  been  understood  as  a  reference,  not  to  the 
founder  of  the  future,  better  dispensation  in  particular, 

authorized  expounder  of  the  Law,  gave  two  wives  to  king  Joash ;)  the 
king  was  forbidden  to  maintain  a  numerous  Harem,  after  the  oriental 
manner,  to  his  own  harm,  and  the  wide  injury  of  his  subjects  through  the 
example.  —  "Neither  shall  he  greatly  multiply  to  himself  silver  and  gold" 
(17);  the  lust  of  which  would  lead  to  extortion,  while  their  possession 
might  enable  him  to  rear  a  despotism. 
*  See  p.  451. 


464  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  [LECT. 

but  to  the  line  of  teachers  to  be  raised  up,  from  time  to 
time,  in  the  Jewish  Church.  But  I  find  no  argument 
for  this  departure  from  the  most  obvious  exposition, 
except  the  supposed  improbability,  that  an  event  so  far 
distant  as  we  know  the  Messiah's  coming  to  have  been, 
would  be  referred  to  in  this  connexion  ;  an  argument  to 
which  I  cannot  ascribe 'any  force,  inasmuch  as  it  ap- 
pears to  me  altogether  natural  for  Moses  to  bid  the 
Israelites  await  God's  time  for  making  further  dis- 
closures, whatever  that  time  might  be,  instead  of  seek- 
ing them  at  forbidden  sources.  And,  on  the  other  hand, 
persuaded  as  I  am,  that  Moses  was  the  subject  of  su- 
pernatural illumination,  I  am  more  than  prepared  to 
believe,  that  he  was  informed  of  the  character  of  bis 
Law,  as  being  (what  we  know  it  to  have  been)  a  pre- 
paratory dispensation ;  and  that  he  received  that  infor- 
mation (as  he  seems  to  declare)  at  the  time  when  he 
received  the  Law  itself.  And,  when  I  consider  the 
extreme  difficulty  of  applying  to  any  person,  or  succes- 
sion of  persons,  in  the  Jewish  history,  antecedent  to  the 
time  of  Jesus,  the  description  of  being  like  unto  Moses, 
whose  great  distinction  was,  that  he  was  the  founder  of 
a  new  religious  system,  supernaturally  communicated  to 
his  own  mind,  and  sustained  by  miraculous  exhibitions 
of  which  he  was  the  instrument ;  and  when  I  remem- 
ber how  explicitly  our  Lord  says  of  Moses,  in  a  dis- 
tinct reference  to  the  evidences  of  his  own  claims,  "  He 
wrote  of  me,"  and  observe,  in  the  New  Testament  rec- 
ords, authoritative  references  to  this  passage,  to  which 
I  can  attach  no  other  satisfactory  meaning,  —  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  regard  Moses  as  here  predicting  the  mission 
of  the  finisher  of  his  own  incomplete  work,  the  advent  of 
Jesus  Christ,  the  Saviour  of  the  World.* 

•  Deut  xviii.  15-22;  compare  John  v.  46.  —  Whoever  was  the  •writer 
of  the  last  verses  of  this  book  (xxxiv.  10  - 12),  I  cannot  but  think,  that  he 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32. —  XXVI.  19.  465 

Most  nations  have  their  Laws  of  Naturalization,  or  of 
admitting  foreigners  to  the  privileges  of  citizenship. 
The  Israelites  had  theirs.  We  have  seen  that  the 
Jewish  religion  admitted  proselytes,  the  nation  at  the 
same  time  adopting  citizens.*  The  prerogatives  of 
citizenship  were  great ;  to  name  but  one  of  them,  the 
citizen,  and  no  other,  could  hold  land  in  perpetuity. 
Accordingly,  we  might  expect  to  find  that  some  cautions 
were  necessary  in  the  offer  of  this  privilege,  and  that 
checks  were  placed  upon  its  extension  to  any,  from 
whom  the  national  institutions  would  be  peculiarly  in 

looked  upon  the  resemblance  of  the  promised  prophet  to  Moses,  in  the 
light  in  which  I  have  above  described  it,  when,  intimating  the  expecta- 
tion, which,  ever  since  their  first  leader's  death,  the  nation  had  entertain- 
ed, but  which  hitherto  they  had  cherished  only  to  be  disappointed,  he  says, 
that  "  there  arose  not  a  prophet  since  in  Israel  like  unto  Moses."  On  the 
other  hand,  I  cannot  but  regard  the  first  martyr,  Stephen,  as  distinctly 
implying  (Acts  vii.  37),  and  the  apostle  Peter  as  declaring,  that,  after  the 
ages  of  delay,  the  prophet,  promised  by  the  lawgiver,  at  length  had  come. 
"  Moses  truly,"  are  Peter's  words,  "  said  unto  the  fatliers,  '  A  prophet 
shall  the  Lord  your  God  raise  up  unto  you  of  your  bretliren,  like  unto  me ' 

'Untoyoufirst, God,  Aai'fngTfliserf up  his  son  Jesus'"  &c.( Acts  iii. 

22  -  26).  —  "  The  Lord  thy  God  shall  raise  up  unto  thee  a  prophet,"  said 
Moses,  "  unto  him  ye  shall  hearken"  (15)  ;  and,  when  the  prophet  came,  it 
was  to  these  words,  I  conceive,  that  the  remarkable  attestation  to  him,  by 
a  miraculous  voice,  referred,  when,  on  the  mountain  of  transfiguration,  the 
august  form  of  the  old  lawgiver  was  revealed  in  communion  with  him ; 
"  This  is  my  beloved  son,  hear  ye  him  "  (Matt.  xvii.  5 ;  Mark  ix.  7 ;  Luke 
ix.  35). — The  fact,  which  Moses  communicates  in  16-18,  viz.,  that,  at 
the  time  when  the  people  prayed,  that  God  would  not  appear  to  them  in 
such  terrific  majesty,  he  had  replied,  that  so  it  should  be,  and  that  what- 
ever he  should  have  to  reveal,  he  would  reveal  through  Moses,  and,  later, 
through  a  prophet  like  him,  is  not  related  in  the  parallel  passage.  (Com- 
pare Ex.  XX.  18-22.)  —  False  pretenders  to  the  character  of  this  prophet, 
should  they  present  themselves,  were  to  be  detected  (Deut.  xviii.  21,  22) 
by  their  failure  to  give  supernatural  evidence  of  a  supernatural  com- 
mission ;  and  they,  as  well  as  those  who  attempted  to  seduce  the  people 
to  the  worship  of  other  deities,  were  to  be  put  to  death.  (Compare  xiii. 
1-5.)  It  was  under  this  law,  I  suppose,  that  the  Jews  proposed  to  pro- 
ceed with  Jesus,  as  related  in  John  xix.  7.  If  so,  we  have  here  an  addi- 
tional indication,  that  the  nation  understood  these  words,  of  their  Messiah. 
*  Ex.  xii.  48. 

VOL.  I.  59 


466         DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.       [LECT. 

danger,  or  who,  from  any  cause,  would  be  undesirable 
associates.  Such  restrictions  we,  in  fact,  find  to  have 
been  prescribed.  While,  for  a  general  rule,  it  ajppears 
that  foreigners  might  be  naturalized,  or  "  enter  into  the 
congregation  of  the  Lord,"  on  submitting  themselves  to 
the  initiatory  rite  of  Judaism,  an  Egyptian,  or  Idumean, 
could  not  claim  the  privilege,  unless  his  father  and 
grandfather  before  him  had  been  residents  in  the  coun- 
try ;  that  length  of  time,  it  seems,  being  thought  need- 
ed to  afford  sufficient  security,  that  such  families  had 
abandoned  the  religion  and  habits  of  the  respective 
countries  of  their  origin,  for  those  of  their  adoption.  Ac- 
cessions from  among  the  Ammonites  and  Moabites 
were  more  undesirable  still.  Their  races  had  mani- 
fested, both  a  sullen,  and  one  an  insidious  hostility,  to 
the  race  of  Israel,  which  admitted  of  no  satisfaction  in 
welcoming  them  to  its  fellowship ;  and  they,  by  a  per- 
petual edict,  were  denied  the  privilege,  till  the  residence 
of  a  family  could  be  dated  back  ten  generations.  In 
another  way,  this  law  operated  to  prevent  a  dangerous 
intercourse  with  unfriendly  and  suspected  neighbours. 
A  Jewish  woman  and  her  friends  would  be  indisposed 
to  an  alliance  with  one  of  them,  though  no  positive  law 
forbade,  when  she  must  look  forward  to  her  posterity 
being  so  long  disfranchised  and  degraded.* 

*  Dent,  xxiii.  1-8.  — "  Non  intrabit "  &c.  (1).  En  Judaismi  indolem, 
polygamise,  ac  malis  crebris  eo  pertinentibus,  plane  inimicam.  Ubi  enim 
polygamia  nimia,  ibi  eunuchorum  caterva.  En  indolem  honestam,  qu© 
civem  Judaeura,  domini  libidinis  ministrum  vilera  fieri  noluit.  — "  A  bas- 
tard" &c.  (2).  The  word  nrpn  occurs  in  only  one  other  place  (Zech.  ix. 
6),  and  its  meaning  is  altogether  doubtful.  The  most  plausible  interpreta- 
tion which  I  have  seen  of  it,  attributed  by  Rosenmiiller  (ad  loc.)  to  a 
German  critic,  represents  it  as  the  Hiphil  participle  of  a  lost  verb  "^jd^ 
the  sense  of  which,  as  ascertained  by  the  corresponding  root  in  Arabic,  is, 
he  corrupted.  The  corrupter^  would  be  an  expression  very  suitable  to  be 
used  of  the  Canaanites  (Ex.  xxiiL  33,  xxxiv.  15,  16) ;  and  they  accordingly 
are  supposed  to  be  meant  (compare  3, 7). — In  the  words,  "  the  lenth  gener- 


■Mr- 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY   XI.  32.  — XXVI.   19.  467 

A  not  less  important  feature  of  the  relations  of  the 
Jews  to  foreign  nations  is  found  in  their  Laws  of  War. 
Of  the  manner  in  which  they  were  to  conduct  hostilities 
against  the  inhabitants  of  Canaan,  I  have  already  treated 
at  length.  With  these  they  were  to  make  no  treaty, 
nor  hold  out  to  them  any  hope  of  security,  while  re- 
maining within  their  reach.*  To  other  nations,  which, 
after  a  war  had  broken  out,  entered  seasonably  into  a 
negotiation  for  surrender,  to  be  proposed  on  the  part  of 
the  Jews,  they  were  bound  to  give  full  security  for  life, 
exacting  only  tribute  by  the  right  of  conquest,  and  as 
indemnity  for  the  hostilities  which  had  been  provoked ;  f 
a  great  advance,  apparently,  on  the  practices  of  the  age. 
If,  refusing  to  capitulate,  a  city  had  to  be  taken  by 
storm,  its  defenders  might  be  put  to  the  sword  (a  prin- 
ciple equally  recognised  in  theory,  in  modern  warfare), 
and  their  property  seized ;  but  women  and  children 
must  be  spared.f     With  the  Amalekites,  war  must  be 

ation  "  (2,  3),  the  numeral  may  indicate  an  indefinitely  long  time,  and  so 
be  in  a  manner  equivalent  to  "  for  ever  "  (3) ;  but  I  am  rather  inclined  to 
interpret  this  last  verse  thus ;  "  For  ever  "  it  shall  be  a  rule,  that  "  to  their 
tenth  generation"  &c.    Compare,  however,  Nehemiah  xiii.  1. 

*  Deut.  XX.  15-18;  compare  pp.  436-441.  —  The  language  in  verse  13 
is  clearly  trt  ierrorem  (compare  11),  being  to  this  eflFect ;  If  the  cities 
which  may  capitulate  in  season,  do  not,  their  defenders  expose  themselves 
to  be  put  to  death.  By  parity  of  reasoning,  the  sense  of  16,  17,  is  natu- 
rally taken  to  be  the  same  ;  If  the  nations  which  cannot  be  admitted  to 
treat,  remain  to  be  attacked,  they  have  nothing  to  hope.  —  Another  reason 
for  not  making  a  treaty  with  the  Canaanites  (vii.  2)  might  have  been,  that 
the  same  perfidy,  which,  noted  in  the  Carthaginians,  their  descendants, 
gave  rise  to  the  name  of  Punic  faith,  was  known  to  be  a  characteristic 
of  theirs.     Compare  Numb,  xxxiii.  55. 

t  Deut  XX.  10,  11. 

{  XX.  12  - 14.  I  say,  "  might  be  put  to  the  sword,"  for  there  can  be 
no  question,  on  grounds  of  grammar,  about  the  propriety  of  rendering 
the  Hebrew  future  as  potential,  and  the  spirit  of  the  passage  recommends 
this  version ;  quasi,  When  you  are  compelled  to  take  a  city  by  storm,  if 
you  put  its  armed  garrison  to  the  sword,  make  no  other  victims.  Compare 
xxii.  7. 


468         DEUTERONOMY  XL  32.  — XXVI.  19.      [LECT. 

waged,  till  the  power  of  that  pestilent  horde  of  land 
pirates  should  be  blotted  out  of  memory.* 

Nor  are  the  Jewish  War  Laws,  relating  to  internal 
administration,  without  their  interest.  When  the  host 
was  mustered  for  an  expedition,  and  had  been  ad- 
dressed by  the  priest  with  an  exhortation  to  courage, 
founded  on  a  pious  confidence  in  the  guardian  God  of 
Israel,  heralds,  before  it  was  marshalled  and  officered, 
were  to  make  proclamation,  that  whatever  citizen  soldier 
had  lately  built  a  house,  or  planted  a  vineyard,  or  con- 
tracted a  marriage,  was  at  liberty  to  retire  unquestioned 
to  his  home ;  and  finally,  that  the  same  privilege  was 
allowed  to  whosoever  was  "  fearful  and  faint-hearted."  t 
The  wise  reason  of  the  last  provision,  is  given;  the 
coward  was  permitted,  and  advised  to  retire,  "  lest  his 
brethren's  heart  faint  as  well  as  his  heart."  In  an  age 
when  military  discipline  had  not  achieved  the  work  of 
giving  to  men  of  no  character  a  factitious  courage,  by 
making  fear  of  superiors  overcome  fear  of  the  enemy, 
a  panic,  originating  in  one  weak  mind,  might  spread  so 
as  to  cause  universal  disorder  and  shameful  rout.  He, 
accordingly,  who  found  in  himself  so  little  stomach  for 
such  an  enterprise,  that,  rather  than  encounter  its  haz- 
ards, he  preferred  to  make  his  reluctance  known  under 
such  public  circumstances,  might  better  be  spared  than 
retained ;  while  one  who  had  forborne  to  avail  himself 
of  the  permission  when  it  was  offered,  conscious  that 
he  had  left  himself  without  excuse,  should  he  prove 

*  Deut.  XXV.  17-19.  How  well  this  race  of  rovers  deserved  the  name 
which  I  have  given  them,  is  easily  understood,  if  what  is  related  of  them 
here  (compare  Ex.  xvii.  8)  is  a  specimen  of  their  practices  ;  nor  would  any 
legislator  expose  himself  to  complaint  by  directing  tlie  breaking  up  of  a 
nest  of  freebooters,  of  enemies  of  the  human  race.  To  say  that  absolute 
individual  extermination  is  here  commanded,  would  be  to  go  much  beyond 
the  record. 


t  Deut  XX.  1-9. 


it 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  469 

craven  afterwards,  was  placed  under  a  new  impulse  to 
a  manful  conduct.  Through  the  rellcx  influence  of  the 
other  laws,  important  contributions  were  secured  to  the 
public  welfare.  The  citizen,  who  found  himself  indis- 
posed to  serve  the  state  in  one  way,  was  led  to  earn  his 
exemption  by  serving  it  in  another.  It  was  the  policy 
of  the  state  that  houses  should  be  built,  vineyards 
planted,  and  domestic  contracts  formed ;  and  whoever 
was  conscious  of  an  insurmountable  aversion  to  the 
perils  of  war,  would  take  care  seasonably  to  provide 
himself  with  an  honorable  title  to  be  discharged  from 
them.*  —  In  conducting  a  war,  the  people  were  to  be 
provident,  as  well  as  energetic,  not  destroying  wantonly, 
in  its  operations,  what  would  else  be  of  value  after  its 
close ;  t  and,  regarding  their  camp  as  a  place  honored  by 
the  virtual  presence  of  Jehovah,  they  were  to  observe, 
in  all  their  arrangements,  that  order  and  decorum,  which 
a  reverential  sense  of  this  would  naturally  prompt. J 

Some  important  additions  are  made,  in  this  collection, 
to  the  rules  respecting  Domestic  Relations.  To  the 
law  in  Leviticus  forbidding  the  marriage  of  a  widow 
with  her  husband's  brother,  one  exception  is  now  speci- 

*  It  may  be  added,  that  the  life  of  a  citizen  thus  circumstanced,  would 
be  peculiarly  valuable  to  his  family,  and  to  the  state  ;  and,  further,  tliat, 
persuading  himself  that  it  was  peculiarly  valuable,  he  might  be  more 
backward  to  expose  it,  than  would  consist  with  his  best  usefulness  as  a 
soldier.  In  Deut.  xxiv.  5,  the  dispensation  under  one  of  the  cases  here 
named,  is  extended  from  military  to  civil  service, 

f  XX.  19,  20.  —  Trees  not  bearing  fruit  might  be  felled  (20) ;  fruit-trees 
were  "man's  life"  (19;  compare  Gen.  i  29),  and  it  would  take  along 
time  to  replace  them. 

X  xxiii.  9-14.  —  Quicquid  sit,  quod  e  Bensu  communi  (ut  dicunt)  a 
reverentia  et  verecundia  abhorret,  id  a  prsesentia  divina  abesse  debet  — 
Clericus  (recte,  me  judice)  meretrices  a  castris  Judaicis  9no  (confer  10, 11) 
arceri  vult  —  Munditise,  pudoris,  honestatia  (12-14)  prseceptum  datur, 
quod  omnia  his  virtutibus  contraria  animum  parum  Dei  observantem  in- 
dicare  existimantur.  Adde  quod  cautum  est,  ne  fcetor  se  diffunderet, 
malum  nequaquam  sub  coelo  calido  temnendum. 


470  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  [LECT. 

fied.  If  a  married  Jew  died  without  leaving  children, 
his  brother  (the  oldest  brother,  it  is  probable,  as  being 
next  in  succession,)  was  not  only  allowed,  but  bound, 
under  penalty  of  being  the  subject  of  a  degrading  pub- 
lic ceremony,  and  bearing  thenceforward  an  ignominious 
name,  to  espouse  the  surviving  wife ;  and  the  eldest 
son  born  of  this  alliance,  being  legally  reckoned  as  the 
son  of  the  deceased,  succeeded  to  his  estate.*  —  In  the 
treatment  of  female  captives,  a  forbearance  is  enjoined, 
which,  however  far  it  may  fall  short  of  the  generosity 
that  a  higher  culture  would  have  taught,  was  evidently, 
from  the  terms  of  its  statement,  a  material  advance  on 
the  customs  of  the  time.  If  he  into  whose  hands  one 
of  these  captives  had  been  brought  by  the  hard  for- 
tune of  war,  designed  to  make  her  his  wife,  a  period  for 
soUtary  mourning  over  her  altered  condition  was  first 
allowed,  before  she  was  expected  to  transfer  her  in- 
terests to  a  conqueror's  home.  If,  having  espoused 
her,  he  saw  fit  afterwards  to  use  his  liberty  of  divorce, 
she  was  then  entitled  to  her  freedom  ;  she  could  not  be 
retained  as  his  slave,  nor  sold  by  him  to  be  another 

*  Deut  XXV.  5-10;  compare  p.  290.  Which  of  the  reasons  proposed 
in  note  J  on  that  page,  occasioned  this  alteration  in  the  law,  I  am  unable 
lo  show.  Both  may  have  had  their  weight  On  the  one  hand,  it  is  cer- 
tain, from  very  numerous  indications,  throughout  the  Old  Testament  books 
(compare  Numb,  xxvii.  4),  that  to  have  his  memory  kept  alive  by  offspring, 
was  a  special  object  of  a  Jew's  ambition ;  and  the  provision  before  us  may 
have  been  the  Law's  indulgence  to  that  feeling,  (a  feeling,  which  it  did 
well  to  keep  alive,)  afforded  in  the  best  way  which  the  case  allowed.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  rule  prevented  such  an  accumulation  of  property,  as 
would  have  resulted  from  a  necessity,  that  the  estate  of  a  childless  pro- 
prietor decetised  should  pass  to  a  collateral  branch.  —  "  If  brethren  dtcell 
together"  &c.  (5).  By  this  I  understand,  that  if  the  surviving  next  of  kin 
had  expatriated  himself,  there  was  a  transfer  of  the  obligation  to  another 
brother.  —  Concerning  the  significance  of  the  ceremony  referred  to  in  9, 
10, 1  have  seen  no  plausible  conjecture.  It  was  probably  ancient  Part 
of  it  was  used  (Ruth  iv.  7)  where  no  affront  was  intended,  but  only  the 
renunciation  of  a  right 


• 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.   19.  471 

man's.*  —  In  respect  to  the  privilege  of  Divorce,  a  large 
discretion  was  allowed  to  Israelitish  husbands,  on  ac- 
count, as  Jesus  said,  of  "  the  hardness  of  their  hearts  ";  t 
and  yet  it  was  plainly  the  purpose  of  the  Law  to  intro- 
duce some  restraints  upon  the  license  of  that  practice, 
as  it  had  hitherto  prevailed.  Before  the  repudiated 
wife  can  be  dismissed,  Moses  requires  that  "  a  bill  of 
divorcement "  shall  be  written,  and  given  "  in  her  hand." 
The  act,  being  thus  necessarily  attended  with  formali- 
ties, which  took  time  and  demanded  deliberation,  could 
never  be  done  under  any  sudden  impulse  of  passion. 
Still  more,  as  it  is  probable  that  a  small  proportion  of 
the  people  were  capable  of  being  their  own  scribes  for 
such  a  purpose,  the  time  necessarily  occupied  in  seek- 
ing another's  aid  would  invite  the  access  of  relenting 
thoughts ;  and  the  consultation,  which  would  naturally 
follow,  with  a  Levite  employed  to  draw  up  the  writing, 
or  some  other  person  capable  of  soothing  resentment, 
and  advising  for  the  best,  would  often  arrest  the  pro- 
ceeding, which  had  been  hastily  resolved  upon. — A  di- 
vorced woman,  who  married  again,  could  not  be  re- 
united to  her  former  husband,  after  the  death  of  the 
second,  or  after  he  too  had  divorced  her ;  otherwise, 
it  is  likely,  the  natural  return  of  the  affections  to  their 
first  object,  might  have  endangered  the  life  of  the  part- 
ner of  the  second  marriage,  or  led  to  attempts  to  pro- 
voke him  too  to  dissolve  the  union.J  In  two  cases,  the 
husband  forfeited  his  liberty  of  divorce ;  the  one,  when 
he  had  married,  as  the  Law  compelled  him  to  do,  the 
woman  whom  he  had  seduced  from  virtue  ;  §  the  other, 

*  Deut.  xxi.  10-14.  The  regulation  has  affinity  with  that  in  Ex.  xxi. 
7-11,  respecting  purchased  bond-women.  By  all  parity  of  reasoning,  a 
female,  thus  dismissed,  would  be  entitled  to  the  benefit  of  the  provision 
in  Deut.  XV.  12-14. 

t  Matt  xix.  8.  X  DeuL  xxiv.  1-4.  §  xxii.  28, 29, 


■fv 


472  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVL  19.  [LECT. 

when  he  had  falsely  represented  his  wife  to  have  been 
unchaste  before  their  union.*  —  The  Rights  of  Children 
were  protected  by  peculiar  regulations,  having  refer- 
ence to  the  rivalship  and  preferences  to  which  polygamy 
would  unavoidably  give  rise.  The  oldest  son  could  not 
be  despoiled  of  his  right  of  primogeniture  (that  of  in- 
heriting a  double  portion  of  the  family  estate),  on  ac- 
count of  his  mother's  not  being  the  favorite  wife ;  f 
and,  in  the  charge  of  incorrigible  profligacy  made  against 
a  son,  both  parents  must  unite  to  make  it  valid, J  else 
a  weak  father  might  be  prevailed  on  by  the  mother  of 
one  part  of  his  offspring,  to  do  injusUce  to  the  rest. 

The  prohibition  of  Usury  might,  in  one  aspect,  be 
arranged  under  the  next  class  of  rules,  which  I  am  to 
specify.  But,  in  an  important  point  of  view,  it  demands 
a  separate  consideration.  Commerce,  to  be  carried  on 
to  any  considerable  extent,  requires  the  use  of  credit. 
A  community,  whose  citizens  have  little  or  no  command 
of  borrowed  capital,  can  never  engage  in  the  transac- 
tions of  trade,  on  any  but  the  most  limited  scale.  But, 
where  the  taking  of  interest  for  money  lent  is  not  allow- 
ed, no  loans  will  be  made  except  in  the  way  of  charity 
to  the  indigent  (which  none  could  be  esteemed  to  be, 
who  proposed  to  borrow  money  to  invest  in  business) ; 
since,  if  I  may  have  no  rent  for  money,  I  shall,  rather 
than  lend  it,  prefer  to  purchase  something  with  it,  from 
which  I  may  obtain  a  profit.  The  Law  of  Moses,  ac- 
cordingly, in  prohibiting  the  taking  of  interest,  struck  a 
blow  against  any  tendency  of  the  people  to  engage  in 
those  pursuits  of  commerce,  which,  by  leading  them  to 

*  Deut  xxii.  19. 

f  xxi.  15  - 17.  This  text  makes  it  certain,  that,  where  there  were 
children  by  diflFerent  mothers,  there  was  reckoned  in  a  family  only  one 
first-born  ;  compare  p.  317,  note  *. 

t  xxi.  18,  19.  jJ^ 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  473 

too  much  intercourse  with  other  nations,  would  have 
endangered  the  purity  of  their  faith.  I  say,  by  prohib- 
iting the  taking  of  interest ;  for  the  Law,  by  the  word 
which  our  translators  have  rendered  usury,  intended  not 
excessive  interest,  but  all  interest  whatever.  The  ob- 
ject of  depriving  the  Israelite  of  the  use  of  borrowed 
money,  except  for  the  supply  of  his  necessities,  was 
attained  by  successive  steps.  The  first  direction,  touch- 
ing the  subject,  was  introduced  into  the  original  legisla- 
tion at  Mount  Sinai,  to  the '  effect,  that,  from  a  poor 
Israelite,  interest  on  money  lent  might  not  be  exacted.* 
A  Uttle  later,  apparently  to  create  a  greater  familiarity 
with  the  approved  practice,  the  rule  was  extended  to 
loans  made  to  strangers  dwelling  among  the  IsraeUtes, 
and  to  loans  of  articles  of  food  as  well  as  money.f 
Hitherto  the  danger  of  the  people's  addicting  them- 
selves to  commercial  pursuits,  was  remote.  But,  when 
they  were  about  to  be  established  in  the  promised  land, 
the  rule  for  which  preparation  had  been  making,  was  at 
length  announced  in  its  whole  breadth,  —  that  a  Jew 
might  take  no  interest  from  a  countryman  for  the  loan 
of  money,  or  of  merchantable  commodities  of  any  sort ; 
from  which,  as  I  have  said,  it  would  follow  as  a  certain 
consequence,  that  very  litde  money  would  be  lent  for 
purposes  of  traffic.  With  credits  given  to  foreigners, 
the  Law  declared  itself  to  have  no  concern,  it  being  no 
part  of  its  province  to  limit  their  commercial  opera- 
tions.t 

Besides  what  are  properly  called  laws,  we  find  in 
this  discourse  the  most  earnest  and  considerate  incul- 
cation of  sentiments  and  offices  of  Justice,  Humanity, 
Courtesy,  and  a  Compassion  extending  to  the  inferior 
races.     Not  only  was  the  Israelite  taught  to  shun  all 

•  Ex.  xxiL  25.  t  Lev.  xxv.  35-38.  %  Deut  xxiii,  19, 20. 

VOL.    I.  60 


474  DEUTERONOMY    XI.   32.  — XXVI.  19.  f[LECT. 

dishonesty  in  his  dealings,  —  respecting  his  neighbour's 
land-mark,*  and  selling  and  buying  by  the  same  weights 
and  measures,  and  those  such  as  had  been  carefully 
ascertained  to  be  true  standards,!  —  but  with  emphatic 
repetition  it  was  enjoined  upon  him  to  pity, and  relieve 
the  poor,  the  widow,  the  fatherless,  the  stranger,  and 
the  bond-man.t  Nor  did  his  rule  stop  short  in  the 
urgent  enforcement  of  principles  of  benevolent  action, 
which,  from  their  essential  vagueness,  might  trust  too 
much  to  the  discretion  of  a  sordid  interpreter.  The 
Israelite,  after  extending  the  hospitality  and  bounty  of 
his  Offering  Feasts,  and  his  Second  Tithes  and  First- 
lings, and  affording  the  legal  advantages  of  the  Sab- 
batical year,^  was  not  only  charged  to  lend  freely  to  a 
needy  brother, — disregarding  the  thought  that  the  "year 
of  release"  might  be  near  at  hand,  (during  which  he 
could  not  expect  to  collect  his  debt,||)   and   that  he 

*  Deut  xix.  14.  —  This  precept  had  not  before  been  given.  The  occa- 
sion for  it  arose,  now  that  tlie  Jews  were  about  to  become  landholders. 

f  XXV.  13-16;  compare  Lev.  xix.  35-37.  —  "That  thy  days  may  be 
lengthened"  &c.  (15) ;  the  life  of  a  nation  being  naturally  prolonged  by 
the  prevalence  in  it  of  principles  of  integrity.  Compare  p.  173,  note ; 
also  verses  17,  18,  for  an  example  of  the  use  of  the  pronoun.  Michaelis 
("Commentary"  &c.  book  4,  chap.  5,  §  10,)  has  a  striking  sugges- 
tion, tliat  the  parts  and  furniture  of  the  Tabernacle  (e.  g.  Ex.  xxv. 
10,  23;  XXX.  2),  including  the  pedestals  of  columns,  which  .weighed  each 
a.  talent  (Ex.  xxxviii.  27;  compare  25,  26;  xxx.  13;  xxv.  31,  39),  having 
th^feir  dimensions  exactly  described,  and  committed  to  the  care  of  the  Le- 
vites,  (Numb.  i.  riO ;  iv.  32,)  furnished  the  permanent  legal  standards  of 
value.  The  standard  measures  of  capacity  may  have  been  the  pot  of 
manna  deptisited  by  Moses,  (Ex.  xvi.  33,  36,)  which  was  of  gold,  (Heb.  ix. 
4,)  and  the  golden  bowls  upon  the  table  of  shew-bread  (Ex.  xxv.  29). 
An  expression  m  1  Chron.  xxiii.  29,  is  remarkable.  A  portion  of  the 
Levites,  in  Solomon'^  time,  were  over  "  all  measure  and  size." 

X  Compare  Deut.  x.  18,  19  ;  Ex.  xxii.  21  -  24  ;  where  I  understand  the 
threat  in  24,  to  be  to  the  effect,  that  a  neglect  of  these  rules,  so  well 
fitted  to  unite  a  people  in  love,  would  end  in  civil  dissensions,  making 
them  an  easy  prey  to  their  enemies.  No  one,  perhaps,  would  be  prepared 
to  say,  that  God^s  killing  them  teith  the  sword  for  their  sin,  should  be 
taken  literally. 

§  See  pp.  301  -305.  ||  Deut.  xv.  7  - 11. 


XIX.  ]  DEUTERONOMY  XL  32.  —  XXVI.  19.  475 

might  himself  reap  no  advantage  from  the  loan,  beyond 
the  great  advantage  of  doing  a  charitable  act,*  —  but  he 
was  instructed  not  to  go  over  his  field,  his  vineyard,  or 
his  olive  yard,  a  second  time,  to  collect  what  the  first 
gathering  might  have  spared,  but  to  leave  this  for  the 
free  gleaning  of  any  indigent  neighbour;!  and  a  deli- 
cate and  considerate  feeling  for  misfortune  was  taught 
him,  when  he  was  forbidden  to  take  as  security  for  a 
debt,  the  mill-stone,  which  was  necessary  to  the  debtor's 
sustenance  and  that  of  his  dependents,  or  to  distress 
him  by  retaining  over  night  the  pledged  garment  need- 
ful for  his  comfortable  rest,  or  to  afflict  his  family  by 
going  into  his  house  to  demand  an  article  promised  in 
pawn,  when  it  might  as  well  be  brought  out  and  de- 
livered, without  the  exposure  of  their  penury  to  a  stran- 
ger's view. I  A  hired  servant,  whether  IsraeUte  or 
foreigner,  was  to  be  paid  his  wages,  before  the  sun  of 
the  day  on  which  they  were  earned,  went  down ;  "  for 
he  is  poor,"  says  the  Law,  in  words  to  which  there  is 
nothing  of  reason  or  eloquence  to  add,  "he  is  poor,  and 
setteth  his  heart  upon  it."  §  A  foreign  slave,  escaped, 
might  not  be  given  up  ;  he  had  found  security  for  free- 
dom when  he  crossed  the  Israelitish  border. ||  A  pre- 
vious law  had  ordained,  that  the  stray  or  overloaded 
beast,  even  of  an  enemy,  should  be  relieved  and  re- 
stored.H  The  present,  going  further,  ordained,**  that 
any  property  found,  its  owner  being  unknown,  should  be 

*  Deut.  xxiii.  19,  20.  f  xxiv.  19-22;  compare  Lev.  xix.  9,  10. 

X  Deut.  xxiv.  6,  10-13.  —  The  precept  not  to  retain  over  night  the 
garment  which  the  debtor  needed  to  sleep  in,  had  been  given  before  in 
Ex.  xxiL  26,  27.  Was  it  to  be  transferred  back  and  forward  then,  every 
day  that  tlie  debt  remained  unpaid  ?  I  think  the  sense  rather  is ;  When, 
having  lent,  you  find  that  your  debtor  is  so  miserably  poor,  that  he  has 
nothing  but  his  cloak  to  leave  with  you  in  pawn,  give  it  back  to  him,  and 
release  the  debt.    Compare  Deut.  xxiv.  17. 

§  xxiv.  14, 15  ;  compare  Lev.  xix.  13.  ||  Deut.  xxiii.  15, 16, 

t  Ex.  xxiii.  4,  5.  **  Deut.  xxii.  1-4. 


476  DEUTERONOMY  XL  32 XXVI.  19.  [LECT. 

kept  and  cared  for,  till  inquiry  for  it  should  be  made. 
The  very  ox,  who  trod  out  the  corn,  (the  ancient  mode 
of  threshing,)  was  not  to  be  so  muzzled  as  to  be  pre- 
vented from  feeding  on  a  part,  to  beguile  and  cheer  his 
labor ;  *  and  even  the  mother  bird,  whose  nest  was  dis- 
covered by  a  passer-by,  was  to  be  unmolested  when  he 
despoiled  her  of  her  young.f 

A  few  directions  occur  in  this  discourse,  not  con- 
veniently referable  to  any  general  head.  A  careful  con- 
sideration for  the  security  of  hfe  is  inculcated,  where 
houses  are  required  to  be  furnished  with  parapets  around 
the  roof,  which  is  used  by  the  Orientals  as  a  place  of 
exercise,  refreshment,  and  repose. J  The  wearing  by 
one  sex  of  the  proper  garments  of  the  other  is  pro- 
hibited, as  opening  a  door  to  immoralities,  and  proba- 
bly also  on  account  of  its  being  a  practice  belonging  to 
the   licentious   forms   of  idolatrous   worship.^      For  a 

*  Deut.  XXV.  4. 

f  xxii.  6,  7.  Besides  its  influence  on  the  general  culture  of  a  com- 
passionate spirit,  it  is  likely  that  this  rule  was  designed  to  serve  economi- 
cal uses.  —  "That  it  may  be  well  with  thee,  and  that  thou  mayest  prolong 
thy  days"  (7).  From  this  text  we  obtain  further  light,  respecting  the 
promise  made  in  several  other  places  besides  the  fifth  commandment. 
Different  rules  made  part  of  one  Law,  designed  and  fitted  to  promote  the 
citizen's  virtue,  and,  through  this  and  in  other  ways,  the  nation's  prosperi- 
ty. Obedience  to  it,  and  the  spirit  which  would  be  manifested  in  every 
minute  act  of  obedience,  would  tend  to  prolong  the  nation's  life  ;  for  as 
the  author  of  the  Proverbs  well  lays  down  the  principle  (xxviii.  2),  «  by 
a  man  of  understanding  and  knowledge  the  state  [firm  footing  of  a  nation] 
shall  be  prolonged."  It  would  be  bold  criticism,  which  should  infer  from 
the  text  before  us,  that  Divine  Providence  would  reward  with  longevity 
an  exercise  of  moderation  in  robbing  a  bird's  nest.  On  any  other  princi- 
ple, again,  how  are  we  to  interpret  the  words  "  for  ever,"  added  to  the 
clause,  as  it  occurs  in  Deut.  iv.  40?  We  speak  of  the  perpetuity  of  a 
nation,  but  hardly  of  that  of  an  individual  human  life. — The  general  sub- 
ject of  thfe  paragraph  in  the  text,  has  been  before  us  at  pp.  292,  293. 

X  xxii.  8 ;  compare  Josh.  ii.  6  ;  2  Sam.  xi.  2. 

§  Deut.  xxii.  5.  In  Cyprus  (Spencer,  "De  Legibus,"  &c.  lib.  2,  cap.  17, 
§  1)  there  was.  a  statue  of  Venus,  to  which  men  sacrificed  in  women's 
attire,  and  women  in  men's. 


:> 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  477 

reason  apparently  similar  to  this  last,  rules  announced 
before,  forbidding  the  sowing  of  different  kinds  of  seed 
together,  and  the  wearing  of  a  garment  of  pecuUar 
fabric,  are  here  repeated;*  and  another  resembling 
them,  is  added,  against  ploughing  with  a  yoke  of  ani- 
mals of  different  species.f  To  give  a  reasonable  in- 
dulgence to  way-farers  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the 
other,  to  prevent  its  being  presumed  upon  too  far,  they 
are  permitted  to  satisfy  their  hunger  in  a  vineyard,  but 
to  carry  no  fruit  away,  and  to  gather  with  the  hand  in  a 
field  of  standing  corn,  but  not  to  put  in  a  sickle.J  The 
exact  limitation  of  the  right  in  the  latter  case,  is  not 
obvious  to  us  ;  the  words,  in  this  connexion,  had  proba- 
bly an  idiomatic,  or  conventional  sense,  which  we  have 
no  means  to  recover.  The  manner  of  affixing  to  the 
dress  the  national  badge,  prescribed  in  a  previous  pas- 
sage, is  now  indicated  with  more  particularity.^ 

Finally,  we  have  now  before  us  the  subject  of  the 
Administration  of  Law,  with  all  the  materials,  which  the 
original  documents  afford,  for  arriving  at  correct  views 
concerning  it. 

The  original  code  had  contained  precepts  touching 
the  respect  due  to  public  office,  and  the  integrity  and 
caution  to  be  exercised  in  the  execution  of  that  trust ; 
the  magistrate  being  even  forbidden  to  receive  a  present, 
lest,  discerning  and  well-intentioned  as  he  might  be,  it 
should  insensibly  bias  his  judgment.  ||  In  the  discourse 
in  Deuteronomy,  Moses,  directing  the  institution  of  a 
magistracy  in  the  several  cities,  so  that  there  shall  not 
need  to  be  a  delay  of  justice  for  any  citizen,  goes  on  to 


*  Deut.  xxii.  9, 11 ;  compare  Lev.  xix.  19;  p.  292. — "Lest  the  fruit 

of  thy  seed be  de^/crf"  (9);  rather,  consecrated,  i.  e.  confiscated 

as  the  punishment  of  the  offence. 

t  Deut  xxii.  10.  J  xxiiL  24,  25. 

§  xxii.  12;  compare  Numb.  xv.  38.  ||  Ex.  xxii.  28 ;  zxiii.  6-8. 


478  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.— XXVI.  19.  [LECT. 

repeat  .these  charges  concerning  judicial  uprightness, 
and  to  provide,  that,  whenever  a  question  belonging  to 
the  interpretation  of  the  Law  should  prove  too  intri- 
cate for  the  solution  of  the  civic  magistrates,  it  should 
be  carried  up  to  "the  place  which  the  Lord  shall 
choose,"  (the  seat  of  the  national  worship,)  and  re- 
ferred "to  the  priests,  the  Levites,  and  to  the  judge 
that  shall  be  in  those  days,"  and  that  the  decision,  thus 
obtained,  should  be  conclusive.  A  uniform  administra- 
tion of  law  throughout  the  country  being  a  point  of 
the  most  material  consequence,  oppugnation  to  the  de- 
crees of  the  central  tribunal  was  made  a  capital  crime.* 
As  first  in  the  case  of  murder,  next  in  all  capital 
cases,  and  afterwards  in  all  criminal  cases  whatsoever, 
the  testimony  of  one  witness  against  a  person  arraigned, 
is  declared  to  be  insufficient  for  his  conviction,  the  pre- 
sumption is,  that  in  civil  controversies,  the  evidence  of 
one  witness  was  legally   credible.f      Witnesses  were 

*  Deut.  xvi.  18-20  ;  xvii.  8-13.  The  latter  provision  is,  in  sliort,  that 
diflScult  cases  shall  be  carried  up,  by  appeal,  from  the  municipal  courts, 
to  the  highest  Law  Tribunal,  near  the  Sanctuary.  The  Levitical  priest- 
hood, "  the  priests  the  Levites,"  would  be  likely  to  be  found  prepared 
with  a  settled  opinion  on  the  subject ;  if  not,  after  a  proper  consultation, 
such  a  decision  would  be  made  and  announced,  the  presiding  officer  at 
the  deliberation,  and  the  organ  of  the  decree,  being  "<Ac  judge  that  shall 
be  in  those  days "  (xvii.  9).  Moses  says  nothing  of  any  such  office  as 
that  of  a  Chief  Justice ;  but  it  would  seem  that  he  expected  such  an  office 
to  be  in  some  way  instituted.  It  would  naturally  devolve  on  the  High 
Priest ;  but  he  forbears  to  speak  of  the  two  trusts  as  being  essentially 
coincident,  thus  leaving  opportunity  for  a  different  disposition  to  be  made, 
whenever,  for  instance,  the  High  Priest  (who  was  such  by  hereditary 
right)  was  incompetent  by  reason  of  youth,  or  some  other  cause,  to  the 
administration  of  law  in  its  highest  department.  That  there  can  be  no 
reference  here  to  the  Judges,  so  called  in  the  book  of  that  name,  I  think 
we  shall  be  satisfied  when  we  come  to  examine  it. 

f  xviL  6 ;  (compare  Numb.  xxxv.  30 ;)  Deut.  xix.  15.  The  provision 
"  at  the  mouth  of  two  witnesses,  or  at  the  mouth  of  three  witnesses  "  &c., 
strikes  a  reader  as  indefinite.  Yet  we  should  not  hesitate  to  say,  in  such 
a  case,  two  wUrusses,  or  more ;  two  witnesses  at  least ;  which  are  only 
different  expressions  for  the  same  thing.     Not  improbably,  however,  it 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  479 

examined  upon  oath.*  They  are  solemnly  charged  to 
be  true  to  their  responsibility,  not  allowing  themselves 
to  be  seduced  from  their  uprightness  by  sympathy  with 
the  popular  will,  or  desire  to  propitiate  the  popular  fa- 
vor, nor  yielding  to  the  natural  temptation  to  wrong 
the  rich  through  feeling  for  the  poor;t  and  the  wit- 
ness, proved  on  a  legal  investigation  to  have  been  per- 
jured, is  doomed  himself  to  undergo  the  same  sentence, 
even  though  it  should  extend  to  loss  of  Ufe,  which  his 
perfidy  would  have  brought  upon  another. t 

The  following  offences  had  been  declared  in  the  pre- 
vious books  to  be  punishable  with  death ;  viz.  idolatrous 
practices  (not  idolatrous  belief,  —  into  this  the  Law 
made  no  inquisition)  ;  ^  blasphemy ;  ||  sabbath-break- 
ing ;  H  usurping  the  sacerdotal  functions ;  **  murder ;  ff 
adultery  with  a  married  woman  (both  parties  being 
included  in  the  punishment) ;  JJ  unchastity  in  a  priest's 
daughter  ;§§  unnatural  lust;||||  incest,  in  some  cases  ;1[1[ 

was  meant  to  declare,  that  where  there  was  an  informer,  he  should  not  be 
a  witness  in  the  contemplation  of  the  rule ;  there  must  be  two  besides. 

•  Lev.  V.  I. 

t  Ex.  xxiii.  1  -  3.  —  "  Put  not  thy  hand,"  &c.  (1 ) ;  i.  e.  do  not  plot  with 
a  bad  man  to  help  his  cause  by  perjury.     Compare  Lev.  xix.  15. 

J  Deut.  xix.  16-21.  —  Cases  of  perjury,  it  seems  (17),  were  reserved 
for  the  cognizance  of  tfte  highest  tribunal,  on  account  of  their  essential 
intricacy,  as  well  as  probably  for  the  greater  solemnity  and  impression. 

§  Ex.  xxii.  18,  20  ;  Lev.  xx.  2,  27.  I|  Lev.  xxiv.  16. 

f  Ex.  xxxi.  14,  15  ;  xxxv.  2.  •*  Numb.  iv.  20. 

ft  Ex.  xxi.  12-14;  Lev.  xxiv.  17,  21.  —  The  killing  of  a  slave,  the 
Law  yielded  so  far  to  the  habits  and  feelings  of  the  time,  as  not  necessarily 
to  avenge  by  death  (Ex.  xxi.  20);  but  the  language  of  the  rule  is  guarded, 
and  does  not  exclude  a  presumption  that  cases  of  an  aggravated  charac- 
ter were  treated  like  other  murders.  If  the  slave  survived  the  assault 
"  a  day  or  two,"  the  Law  admitted  tlie  presumption,  that  the  master,  who 
thus  lost  his  property,  could  not  have  intended  his  blows  to  be  fatal,  and 
accordingly  absolved  him  (Ex.  xxi.  21).  —  The  putting  to  death  of  a  burg- 
lar detected  in  the  act,  was  justifiable  homicide  (Ex.  xxii.  2). 

tt  Lev.  XX.  10.  §§  Lev.  xxi.  9. 

III!  Ex.  xxu.  19;  Lev.  xviii.  22,  23;  xx.  13,  15, 16. 

nil  Lev.  XX.  11, 12, 14. 


480        DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.— XXVI.  19.      [LECT. 

man -Stealing;*  violence  and  insult  offered  to  parents;! 
and  neglect  to  secure  a  vicious  animal  if  it  should  take 
a  citizen's  life.J  To  this  list,  some  additions  are  made 
in  the  compend  in  Deuteronomy  ;  viz.  false  pretension 
to  the  character  of  a  divine  messenger;^  unchastity 
before  marriage,  when  charged  by  a  husband  ;  ||  stub- 
born and  irreclaimable  profligacy,  when  complained  of 
by  parents ;  H  and  opposition  to  the  decree  of  the  high- 
est judicial  authority,**  that  being  a  definite  form  of 

*  Ex.  xxi.  16.  t  Ex.  xxi.  15,  17 ;  Lev.  xx.  9. 

X  Ex.  xxi.  28-31.  —  In  this  case,  unlike  the  killing  of  one  man  by 
another  (Numb.  xxxv.  31),  a  pecuniary  composition  might  be  made,  and 
the  life  of  the  animal's  owner  be  ransomed.  The  reason  is  clear.  A 
man's  life  never  would  be  safe,  if  the  assassin  might  secure  impunity  by 
a  compromise  with  his  next  of  kin,  who,  perhaps,  as  his  heir,  might  be  the 
very  person  whom  his  death  would  most  oblige.  In  the  case  of  an  un- 
conscious animal  being  the  agent,  of  course  there  was  no  such  danger  to 
be  guarded  against,  and  the  owner  was  punished  sufficiently  for  his  ne- 
glect, in  being  compelled  to  purchase  his  life  on  the  best  terms  he  could 
make.  If  the  animal  had  not  been  known  to  be  vicious  before,  he  only 
suffered  the  loss  incident  to  its  being  stoned,  (so  that  it  might  do  no  fur- 
ther injury,)  and  to  his  not  being  permitted  to  use  its  meat.  (Ex.  xxi.  28.) 
Again ;  the  killing  of  a  slave  by  such  an  animal  did  not  involve  its  own- 
er's death.  He  was  amerced  (32)  in  the  value  of  the  animal,  which  was 
stoned,  and  in  the  specific  sum  of  thirty  silver  shekels,  from  which,  by 
the  way,  we  learn  what  was  the  estimate  of  the  average  value  of  a  slave. 

§  Deut  xiii.  1  -  5  ;  xviii.  20. 

II  Deut.  xxii.  20,  21.  —  The  place  of  executiot,  in  this  instance,  was 
peculiar ;  "  the  door  of  her  father's  house."  Probably  the  design  was  to 
make  her  fate  peculiarly  afflicting  to  him,  as  a  punishment  for  his  want  of 
parental  fidelity. 

H  Deut.  xxi.  18-21.  This  law,  instead  of  conferring  new  parental 
prerogatives,  was  probably,  in  respect  to  its  requisitions  of  public  legal 
information  (19,  20)  and  of  the  mother's  being  associated  with  the  father 
in  taking  such  an  extremfe  measure,  (an  arrangement,  the  importance  of 
which  has  been  before  adverted  to,  p.  472,)  a  limitation  of  riglits  before 
existing.  In  a  primitive  state  of  society,  the  palcr-familias  is  all  but 
despotic.  According  to  some  authorities,  the  Roman  father  had  power  of 
life  and  death  over  his  child,  as  late  as  the  time  of  Adrian.  TJie  known 
existence  of  the  rule  under  our  notice  would  sustain  parental  authority 
(so  material  an  object  before  other  authority  was  consolidated),  while  pa- 
rental feelings  would  scarcely  admit  of  its  being  ever  executed. 

**  xviL  12. 


XIX.  ]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.   19.  481 

rebellion,  or  treason.  In  a  few  cases,  a  law  of  this  class, 
before  given,  is  repeated,  in  order  either  to  define  it 
more  exactly,*  or  give  it  a  greater  comprehension,!  or 
make  further  provision  for  carrying  it  into  effect.f 

•  Deut.  xxiv.  7  ;  compare  Ex.  xxi.  16. 

f  Deut.  xxii.  23  -  27  ;  compare  Lev.  xix.  20-22.  —  The  rule  here  referred 
to  in  Leviticus,  taking  no  notice  of  the  case  of  a  free  woman  betrothed, 
had  ordained,  that  a  female  slave,  under  that  engagement,  guilty  of  un- 
chastity,  should  be  scourged,  and  her  paramour  be  held  to  present  a  Tres- 
pass Offering.  The  passage  in  Deuteronomy  makes  tlie  offence  punisha- 
ble with  the  death  of  both  parties,  and  ))reserves  no  distinction  between 
bond  woman  and  free,  designing  probably  that  it  should  no  longer,  in  this 
particular,  be  sustained.  —  One  cannot  say,  on  tlie  authority  of  25-27, 
that  rape  was  a  capital  offence  among  the  Jews.  On  the  contrary,  as 
such,  as  far  as  the  statute-book  is  concerned,  it  was  a  casus  omissus, 
being  regulated  probably  by  consuetudinary  or  common  law.  (Compare 
p.  161.)  The  verses  in  question  treat  the  crime  precisely  on  the  footing 
of  the  adultery  spoken  of  immediately  before  (23,  24) ;  save  only  the 
exemption  of  one  of  the  parties  from  the  punishment,  as  not  participating 
in  the  guilt.  —  The  next  two  verses  repeat  and  extend  the  law  in  Ex.  xxii. 
16,  17,  respecting  the  liabilities  of  a  seducer.  It  had  there  been  ordained, 
that  he  must  offer  the  reparation  of  marriage,  and  make  the  customary 
marriage-present  to  the  father,  whether  he  consented  to  the  union  or  not 
The  sum,  to  be  thus  bestowed,  is  now  specified,  and  the  right  of  divorce 
in  such  a  case  is  declared  to  have  been  forfeited.  I  would  prefer  to 
make  a  new  clause  in  the  middle  of  verse  29,  and  render  thus ;  "  Should 
she  become  his  wife  [which  the  father  might  disallow],  because  he  hath 
humbled  her,  he  may  not  put  her  away"  &c. —  For  the  mere  repetition 
in  verse  30  of  the  law  in  Lev.  xviii.  8  ;  xx.  11,  no  special  reason  is  ap- 
parent. 

X  Deut.  xvii.  2-5,  compare  Ex.  xxii.  20;  xix.  1-13,  compare  Numb. 
XXXV.  9-29.  —  "  Thou  shalt  separate  three  cities  for  thee  in  the  midst  of 
tliy  land  "  &c.  (Deut.  xix.  2) ;  tliat  is,  on  the  west  side  of  Jordan  ;  com- 
pare iv.  41.  —  The  directions  in  verse  3,  "  Thou  shalt  prepare  thee  a 
way"  &c.  (that  is,  there  shall  be  such  roads  to  the  cities  of  refuge, 
and  they  shall  be  so  distributed  through  the  country,  as  to  render  them 
easily  accessible,  to  whosoever  shall  need  their  protection)  with  tlie 

further  command,  "  If  the  Lord  thy  God  enlarge  thy  coast, and 

give  thee  all  the  land  which  he  hath  promised  to  thy  fathers,  (compare 

Gen.  XV.  18.) then  shalt  thou  add  three  cities  more  for  thee,  besides 

these  tlu-ee,"  (8, 9)  constitute  all  the  additions  here,  to  the  rule  in  Numbers, 
It  will  not  escape  observation,  that  the  distinctions  made  in  both  passages, 
(Numb.  XXXV.  16-23,  Deut.  xix.  4,  5, 11,)  are  simply  between  criminal 
and  justifiable  homicides.     The  division  of  the  fonner  class  into  man- 

VOL.   I.  Gl 


482  DEUTERONOMY   XI.  32.  — XXVI.   19.  [LECT. 

Only  the  criminal  could  be  made  to  suffer  for  his 
crime,  the  Law  retusing  to  sanction  the  ancient  savage 
practice  of  implicating  his  innocent  posterity  in  his  fate.* 
The  place,  where  execution  was  done,  as  well  as  trials 
conducted,  was  the  "  gates  "  of  cities,  as  being  at  once 
sufficiently  public,  and  sufficiently  apart  from  the  scene 
of  the  citizens'  occupations.!  When  the  "  blood  aveng- 
er" was  the  executioner,  the  sword,  it  is  to  be  pre- 
sumed, would  be  his  instrument;!  but  in  most,  or  all 
other  cases,  a  criminal  was  put  to  death  by  stoning. 
The  witnesses  were  required  to  make  the  first  assault ; 
a  provision,  which,  of  course,  made  it  necessary,  that 
there  should  have  been  first  a  legal  process,  and  which 
gave  this  further  protection  to  the  accused,  that  noth- 
ing short  of  the  most  inveterate  malignity  would  in- 
duce the  giving  of  false  testimony,  when  the  witness 
knew,  that,  if  conviction  ensued,  he  must  himself  take 
the  lead  in  the  murder  which  would  follow  on  his  per- 
jury.§  We  read  of  burning  and  hanging  ;  ||  but  these 
were  only  post-mortem  insults  to  the  body,  (to  the  end 
of  making  the  example  more  effective,)  similar  to  the 
modern  practices  of  piercing  a  malefactor's  grave  with  a 
stake,  or  exposing  his  head  in  some  conspicuous  place, 
or  leaving  his  limbs  to  decay  on  a  gibbet. 

Extirpation,  or  cutting  off  from  the  people,  I  take  to 
be  simply  the  converse  of  entering  into  the  congregation 

slaughter  and  murder,  made  by  our  modern  law,  we  do  not  find  here 
recognised. 

*  Deut  xxiv.  16.  f  xvii.  5 ;  xxL  19  ;  xxiL  15. 

X  Numb.  XXXV.  19 ;  Deut.  xix.  6.  §  xiii.  9 ;  xvii.  5,  7. 

II  Deut  xxi.  22,  23;  Lev.  xx.  14;  xxi.  9.  To  sustain  what  is  remarked 
above  of  these  accompaniments  of  capital  execution,  see  Josh.  vii.  25 ; 
X.  26.  In  the  former  of  these  cases  the  criminals  are  stoned,  and  then 
burned,  as  if  to  pronounce  them  unfit  to  be  allowed  to  pollute  the  earth 
with  their  carcases;  in  the  latter,  "Joshua  smote  them  and  slew  them,  and 
[then]  hanged  them  on  twelve  trees."  The  precept  to  bury  the  body 
without  delay,  belongs  to  the  class  of  rules  treated  on  p.  363. 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY   XI.  32  —XXVI.   19.  483 

of  the  Lord;*  the  former  signifying  privation  of  all 
rights  of  citizenship,  as  the  latter  denoted  investiture 
with  them.  Since  only  a  Jew  could  hold  an  estate  in 
the  country,  this  extirpation  involved  a  confiscation  of 
landed  property;  a  circumstance,  which  alone,  not  to 
speak  of  other  civil  disabilities,  gave  to  the  punishment  a 
most  serious  character.  This  view  will  explain  the 
fact,  that,  in  a  few  instances,  death  and  extirpation  are 
mentioned  together  as  combined  in  the  punishment  of 
the  same  crime ;  f  a  fact,  which  has  led  most  commen- 
tators to  understand  an  identity  between  them.  In 
such  cases,  if  my  view  be  correct,  the  death  of  an 
offender  was  accompanied  with  the  confiscation  of  his 
landed  estate,  a  combination  of  penalties  analogous  to 
that  in  the  European  law  of  high  treason.  And  it 
deserves  particular  remark,  in  this  connexion,  that  the 
offences  against  which  the  penalty  of  excision  from  the 
people  is  denounced,  are  either  merely  ritual  transgres- 
sions, which  is  the  case  with  far  the  greater  number,  or 
such,  at  least,  as,  when  committed  by  a  Jew,  had  pe- 
culiar aggravation  in  reference  to  his  position  and  char- 
acter as  such.J  Plainly,  as  it  seems  to  me,  the  idea  at 
the  basis  of  this  menace  is,  that  he  who  will  not  sub- 
mit to  the  characteristic  obligations  resting  on  him  as 
one  of  the  community  of  God's  chosen  people,  shall 
have  no  share  in  their  characteristic  privileges. 

Corporeal  punishment  was  prescribed  by  the  Law  in 

*  Deut  xxiiL  1,  2,  3,  a  t  E.  g.  fix.  xxxi.  14. 

%  The  texta  are  Ex.  xii.  15,  19;  xxx.  33,  38;  xxxi.  14;  Lev.  vii. 
20,  21,  25,  27;  xvii.  4,  9,  10,  14;  xviii.  29;  xix.  8;  xx.  3,  6,  17,  18; 
xxii.  3;  xxiii.  29;  Numb.  ix.  13;  xv.  30,  31;  xix.  13,  20.  — Ezra  x. 
8,  as  far  as  authority  may  be  allowed  to  an  interpretation  of  such  com- 
paratively recent  date,  strongly  corroborates  the  view  which  I  have  given. 
—  The  "stranger"  who  might  be  "cut  off,"  spoken  of  in  Ex.  xii.  19,  is 
clearly  the  circumcised  stranger  (48)  who  was  as  truly  a  citizen,  as  one 
"  born  in  the  land." 


484  DEUTERONOMY   XI.  32— XXVI.   19.  [LECT 

two  forms.  When  a  malicious  personal  injury  had  been 
done  to  a  freeman,  it  was  visited  upon  the  offender  by 
the  infliction  of  the  same  harm,  not  in  the  way  of  pri- 
vate retaliation,  but  by  judicial  sentence.  This  rule  had 
been  prescribed  in  the  early  legislation,  in  a  reference 
to  the  simplest  case,  that  of  personal  assault ;  *  in  the 
discourse  in  Deuteronomy,  it  is  carried  out  into  the 
equally  reasonable  application  to  instances  in  which 
the  injury  had  been  caused  by  giving  false  testimo- 
ny.f  Probably  we  are  here  to  recognise  a  practice 
descended  from  earlier  times,  it  being  in  accordance 
with  a  very  simple  theory  of  justice ;  but  it  is  obvious, 
that  nothing  could  have  been  more  effectual  to  secure 
the  essence  of  a  republic,  —  to  maintain  equality,  and  a 
sense  of  equality,  among  the  citizens,  —  than  the  knowl- 
edge, that,  in  the  eye  of  the  Law,  the  richest  and  great- 
est man's  life  or  limb  was  of  the  same  worth  with  that 
of  the  meanest. 

Corporeal  punishment  was  administered  in  cases 
besides  those,  in  which  the  crime,  having  consisted  in 
the  infliction  of  bodily  harm,  admitted  of  being  so  re- 
taliated. The  calumnious  husband,  in  particular,  was  to 
be  beaten,  in  addition  to  the  payment  of  a  heavy  fine 
to  the  head  of  the  family  which  he  had  attempted  to 
disgrace.!  In  instances,  where  the  discretion  of  the 
judge  dictated  this  kind  of  chastisement,^  it  was  ad- 

*  Ex.  xxi.  23-25;  Lev.  xxiv.  19,20. 

f  Deut.  xix.  16-21.  —  It  is  likely  that  this  demand  would  be  often 
compromised,  the  injured  person  being  induced  not  to  give  information ; 
and  then,  virtually,  the  wrong-doer  would  escape  by  paying  a  fine  accord- 
ing to  his  means. 

X  xxii.  13-19. 

§  x.w.  1-3.  —  I  have  followed  in  the  text  the  common  view  of  the 
last  clause  of  verse  3,  though  some  commentators  would  render,  **  lest 
thy  brother  be  too  much  injured."  That  stripes  were  not  an  ignominious 
punishment,  might  be  argued  from  xxii.  19 ;  since  it  would  be  no  satisfac- 
tion to  an  injured  woman,  to  be  joined,  beyond  the  possibility  of  divorce,  to 


XIX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.  485 

ministered  in  his  own  presence,  that  there  might  be  no 
opportunity  for  either  too  great  severity  or  forbearance, 
according  to  the  caprice  or  the  interest  of  underlings ; 
and  the  scourging  was  never  allowed  to  be  excessive 
(forty  stripes  being  the  limitation  of  the  number), 
"  lest,"  it  is  said,  "  thy  brother  should  seem  vile  to 
thee."  What  the  mere  endurance  of  such  chastise- 
ment, in  any  degree,  would  now  be,  in  relation  to 
self-respect  and  the  point  of  honor,  it  appears  that  its 
severity  was  in  that  less  artificial  age. 

Punishments,  virtually  of  the  nature  of  Fines,  were, 
under  the  Jewish  institutions,  of  various  sorts.  We 
have  seen  that  offerings,  particularly  the  Sin  and  Tres- 
pass Offerings,  are  properly  regarded  in  this  point  of 
view.*  Sometimes  a  fine,  being  paid  to  the  person 
injured,  was  simply  an  indemnity  for  a  wrong  done. 
Thus  a  man,  wounded  in  a  fray,  could  recover  of  the 
assailant  the  expenses  of  his  cure,  and  an  equivalent 
for  the  loss  of  his  time ;  a  bodily  injury,  done  to  a 
woman  or  a  slave,  must  be  compensated  to  the  husband, 
or  master ;  and  the  loss  of  an  animal  must  be  paid  for 
by  him,  into  whose  open  pit  it  had  fallen,  or  whose  own 
animal  had  destroyed  it,  except,  that,  in  the  latter  case, 
if  the  offending  beast  had  never  been  known  to  be 
dangerous  before,  it  was  to  be  slaughtered,  and,  with  the 
other,  divided  between  the  two  owners.f  Sometimes 
the  compensation  was  made  in  kind,  either  simply,  as 
when  culpable  carelessness  was  chargeable,  but  noth- 

a  dishonored  husband.  Apart  from  this  sense  of  disgrace  (a  somewhat 
arbitrary  thing),  which,  leading  to  the  abandonment  of  sense  of  character, 
has  properly  caused  the  exclusion  of  this  punishment  from  some  modern 
codes,  it  has  its  obvious  advantages.  —  A  peculiar  maiming  is  prescribed 
in  Deut  xxv.  11, 12,  as  appropriate  to  the  offence  committed. 

*  See  pp.  247-251. 

t  Ex.  xxi.  19,  22,  33-36.  —  A  great  bodily  harm  to  a  slave  was 
punished  by  the  forfeiture  (26,  27)  of  all  future  right  to  his  Bervices. 


486         DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32— XXVI.  19.      [LECT. 

ing  worse,  or  when  a  borrowed  animal  was  lost ;  or 
with  additions,  when  there  had  been  theft  or  fraud, 
varying  from  two  to  five  fold,  with  reference  to  the 
facility  of  concealment,  or  the  degree  of  villany  im- 
plied, the  thief  being  liable,  in  the  last  resort,  to  make 
remuneration  by  being  sold  into  servitude.*  An  omis- 
sion to  present  an  oflfering  due  was  to  be  compensated, 
in  like  manner,  to  the  priest.f  In  the  same  general 
aspect  of  a  pecuniary  mulct,  (only  falling  in  this  instance 
upon  a  community,)  a  ceremony  presents  itself  to  us, 
required  in  this  discourse  in  Deuteronomy  to  be  gone 
through  by  the  magistrates  of  a  city,  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  which  a  murder  had  taken  place,  and  the  per- 
petrator not  been  detected.  The  preliminary  measure- 
ment in  order  to  ascertain  what  city  was  responsible, 
the  procession  which  its  "  elders "  were  obliged  to 
arrange,  to  move  to  some  valley,  watered  by  a  peren- 
nial stream,  which  often  would  not  be  near,  and  the 
procuring  of  the  required  presence  of  the  Levites  to 
take  their  part  in  the  solemnity,  must,  besides  the  use 
of  giving  great  publicity  to  the  crime,  and  setting  on 
foot  an  extensive  inquisition  respecting  it,  have  been 
attended  with  an  expense  and  inconvenience,  which 
would  influence  magistrates  and  citizens  to  a  salutary 
vigilance  for  the  detection  of  individual  offenders.! 
The  Law  of  Moses  knew  nothing  of  imprisoning  as  a 

*  Ex.  xxii.  1-15.  The  distinction  in  the  provisions  ( 1, 4),  making  it  more 
highly  penal  to  sell  or  slaughter  a  stolen  animal,  than  to  preserve  it  alive, 
may  naturally  be  understood  to  have  reference  to  the  greater  difficulty  of 
detection  in  the  former  case.  But  the  Law  (Lev.  vi.  1-5)  encouraged 
confession,  by  requiring  the  self-convicted  thief  to  add  only  twenty  per 
cent  in  making  restitution. 

t  Lev.  V.  14  - 16. 

X  Deut.  xxi.  1-9.  To  use  a  phrase  of  repeated  occurrence  in  the 
earlier  books  (e.  g.  Numb,  xviii.  1)  communities  were  thus  made  to  "bear 
the  iniquity  "  ;  that  is,  they  were  held  accountable.  The  spirit  of  the  rule 
is  so  far  substantially  the  same  with  that  of  Alfred's  institution  of  tithings, 
liundreds,  and  counties. 


XIX.  ]  DEUTERONOMY   XL  32.  — XXVI.   19.  487 

punishment,  nor  did  it  resort  to  confinement  for  any- 
other  purpose  than  that  of  detention.*  But,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  debtor  was  a  prisoner  to  his  creditor, 
being  held  by  him  to  personal  service,  if  he  had  no 
other  means  to  discharge  the  claim.f  And  this  fact  it 
is  necessary  to  keep  in  view,  in  order  to  illustrate  the 
reasonableness  of  the  laws  respecdng  usury,  and  re- 
specting restitution  as  a  punishment  for  theft.  In  con- 
nexion with  them,  it  made  part  of  a  mutually  sustained 
and  energetic  system ;  without  it,  the  laws  of  the  former 
class  would  have  been  oppressive,  and  those  of  the 
latter  ineffectual.  An  Israelite  could  the  better  venture 
to  lend  without  interest,  since  his  security  was  com- 
plete ;  he  had  a  claim  upon  the  debtor's  landed  proper- 
ty (which  there  could  not  fail  to  be),  upon  his  mova- 
bles, and,  in  the  last  resort,  upon  his  person,  as  a  laborer. 
And  a  detected  thief  had  nothing  to  console  him  in 
the  mildness  of  the  penalty  of  restitution ;  since,  in  the 
first  place,  it  was  accompanied,  as  we  have  seen,  by  a 
heavy  fine,  and  resolved  itself,  if  not  so  discharged,  into 
liability  to  be  made  a  slave  to  the  injured  party,  till  the 
debt,  so  enhanced,  was  cancelled.  The  two  prompters 
to  theft,  cupidity  and  idleness,  were  effectually  met  on 
their  own  ground. 

In  the  passage,  which,  at  the  beginning  of  the  twenty- 
sixth  chapter,  follows  the  collection  of  laws  we  have 
been  remarking  on,  Moses  recommends  to  the  Israelite 
a  fit  expression  of  the  devout  and  grateful  sentiments, 
with  which,  reviewing  his  nation's  history,  he  ought  to 
be  filled,  when,  settled  at  length  in  his  promised  coun- 
try, and  having  raised  a  harvest  from  its  long-desired 
soil,  he  should  repair  to  the  Sanctuary  with  his  first 
offering  of  those  First-Fruits,  which  thenceforward  the 
Law  made  it  his  duty  to  present,  with  each  returning 

*  Lev.  xxiv.  12.  t  Ex.  xxii.  3  ;-Lev.  xxvL  39,  47. 


488         DEUTERONOMY  XI.  32.  — XXVI.  19.       [LECT. 

season.*  A  direction  of  the  same  purport  I  understand 
to  be  next  given  in  relation  to  the  time,  when,  having 
surmounted  in  two  years  the  embarrassments  of  a  first 
settlement,  he  should  present  himself  on  the  third  with 
his  offering  of  Tithes.f  And  the  people,  in  conclusion, 
are  briefly  assured,  that  if  true  to  the  obligations  and 
engagements,  which  they  had  been  so  honored  in  being 
permitted  to  assume,  they  would  not  fail  to  experience 
what  designs  of  unequalled  favor  their  Divine  Benefac- 
tor had  conceived  for  them,  when  he  who  was  address- 
ing them  should  have  passed  away.J 

♦  Deut  xxvi.  1-11.       t  xxvi.  12-  15.      \  xxvi.  16-19. 


XX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  489 


LECTURE   XX. 

DEUTERONOMY   XXVU.  1.  — XXXIV.    12. 

Moses  commands  the  Erection  of  an  Altar  on  the  West  Side 
OF  Jordan,  —  the  Inscription  thereupon  of  Imprecations  to 
BE  uttered  by  the  Levites,  and  assented  to  by  the  People, 
—  and  a  Proclamation,  by  all  the  Tribes,  of  Future  Pros- 
perity or  Ruin,  according  as  his  Law  should  be  observed 
OR  violated.  —  He  reverts  to  past  Tokens  of  the  Divine 
Goodness,  and  again  exhibits  the  necessary  Consequences 
of  future  Obedience  and  Defection.  —  He  gives  a  public 
Charge  to  Joshua,  —  delivers  the  Book  of  the  Law  to  the 
Levites,  with  the  Command  to  bead  it  publicly  evert 
Seventh  Year,  —  and  accompanies  Joshua  to  receive  a  Di- 
vine Communication  at  the  Tabernacle.  —  The  Book  closes 
with  the  Records  of  his  Direction  concerning  the  Place 
OF  Deposit  of  the  Law,  —  of  an  Ode,  represented  to  be 
uttered  by  him  in  the  Presence  of  the  Congregation, —  of 
his  Last  Benediction  of  the  Tribes,  —  and  of  his  Death 
AND  Burial.  —  Remarks  on  the  Absence  from  the  Law  of 
ANY  Sanction  derived  from  a  Future  Life. 

At  the  end  of  the  eleventh  chapter  of  this  book, 
before  entering  on  the  recital  of  those  laws  which  we 
have  last  been  considering,  Moses  had  hinted  at  a 
solemn  ceremony,  by  which  he  designed  that  the  peo- 
ple, on  first  occupying  their  destined  country,  should 
consecrate  themselves  anew  to  the  service  of  him,  who, 
at  length,  had  fulfilled  his  word,  in  their  secure  establish- 
ment in  the  home  of  their  fathers.  Proceeding  now  to 
prescribe  that  ceremony,  he  directs,  that,  first,  certain 
imprecations,  which  he  specifies,  upon  the  perpetrator 
of  particular  crimes,  having  been  engraved  upon  the 
stones  of  an  altar,  to  be  erected  on  a  mountain  in  the 
centre  of  the  country,  shall  be  pronounced  aloud  by  the 

VOL.  I.  62 


490  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.   1— XXXIV.   12.  [LECT. 

Levites,  and  responded  to,  in  like  manner,  by  the  Am&n 
of  the  assembled  congregation  ;  and  that  then  the 
prospects  of  the  nation  through  the  coming  ages,  as 
depending,  for  weal  or  woe,  upon  submission  or  dis- 
obedience to  Jehovah  and  his  Law,  shall  be  proclaimed . 
by  the  responsive  voices  of  all  the  tribes,  six  being 
posted,  to  announce  the  curses,  on  the  rugged  and 
dreary  side  of  Ebal,  and  six,  to  bless,  on  the  verdant 
opposite  slope  of  Gerizim. 

Such,  at  least,  is  my  understanding  of  the  narration, 
concerning  some  particulars  of  which,  different  opinions 
have  been  entertained.  "  Thou  shalt  set  thee  up  great 
stones,"  it  is  said,  "  and  thou  shalt  write  upon  them  all 
the  words  of  this  law,  when  thou  art  passed  over."  * 
What  is  meant  by  "  this  law,"  has  been  made  a  ques- 
tion. Some,  misled  by  the  sound  of  the  words,  have 
understood  the  whole  Pentateuch  to  be  intended  ;  a 
theory  not  more  opposed  by  the  consideration  of  the 
extent  of  that  collection  of  documents,  requiring  so 
much  time  and  labor  for  the  inscription  supposed,  than 
by  that  of  the  uselessness  of  such  a  costly  arrange- 
ment for  preserving  and  making  known  to  the  people, 
what,  in  a  much  more  convenient  shape,  was  to  be 
intrusted  to  the  Levites  for  both  purposes.!  Others 
have  understood  by  "  the  law,"  in  this  instance,  the 
book  of  Deuteronomy.  But  that  book  has  no  suitable- 
ness to  be  placed  anywhere  as  an  independent  compo- 
sition ;  being  incomplete,  supposing  the  existence  of 
the  preceding  books,  and  only  satisfactory  when  viewed 
as  a  supplement  to  them.J  Others,  perceiving  the  force 
of  such  considerations,  have  supposed  the  Decalogue 

•  Deut.  xxvii.  2,  a  t  xxxi.  9  - 13,  24  -  26. 

X  See  p,  425.  So  incomplete  is  it,  that,  from  first  to  last,  the  Sabbath 
is  not  mentioned  in  it,  except  in  tlie  Decalogue  (v.  14),  nor  does  any 
reference  to  circumcision  occur,  except  that  the  word  is  twice  used  (x. 
IQ ;  XXX.  6)  in  a  figurative  sense. 


XX.]  DEUTERONOMY   XXVII.   1.  — XXXIV.  12.  491 

to  be  intended,  to  which,  however,  no  reference  is 
made,  either  in  the  direction  of  Moses,  or  in  the  account 
of  its  fulfilment  by  his  successor.^  Lastly,  under  the 
guidance  of  the  context,  and  in  a  very  proper  applica- 
tion of  the  word  rendered  "law,"  (a  word  signifying 
instruction^  injunction,  of  any  kind,  which  the  impreca- 
tions may  rightly  be  considered,  —  not  to  say  that  the 
writing  and  utterance  of  them  were,  strictly  speaking,  a 
law  of  Moses,)  some  have  regarded  the  curses  recorded 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  twenty-seventh  chapter,  and 
the  blessings  at  the  beginning  of  the  next,  as  together 
composing  the  laic  in  question.!  But  this,  I  think,  is 
still  assigning  a  too  great  comprehensiveness  to  the 
present  use  of  that  word.  The  benedictions,  here  pro- 
posed to  be  included,  correspond  to  the  other  curses, 
by  which  they  are  followed,  at  greater  length,  in  the 
same  chapter,  and  (if  I  mistake  not)  were  destined  with 
them  to  the  second  use  which  I  have  specified  above ; 
viz.  that  of  being  rehearsed  by  the  twelve  tribes,  after 
the  first  ceremony  (that  of  the  reading  aloud,  by  the 
Levites,  of  the  twelve  imprecations  engraved  on  the 
altar  stones)  had  been  concluded.  Those  first  twelve 
imprecations,  brought  together  in  one  list,  and  suited 
(as  one  sees  at  a  glance  that  they  are)  to  such  a  use, 
by  their  concise  and  pointed  statement,  so  different 
from  the  diffuse  form  of  most  of  what  follows,  I  take 
to  be  the  law  which  Moses  directed  to  be  inscribed  on 
the  altar.J     And  such,  I  think  we  shall  see  reason  to 

*  Josh.  viii.  30  -  35. 

t  This  view  dates  as  far  back  as  Josephus.    See  his  «  Antiq.  Jud,," 
lib.  4,  cap.  8,  §  44. 

\  Deut  xxvii.  1-8. —  "And  Moses,  with  (he  elders  of  Israel,  com-  - 
manded  tlie   people"   &c.  (1);   he   had   been  hitherto  addressing  the 
elders  (compare  p.  165);  he  now  dismisses  them  with  a  direction  to  ac- 
quaint the  people,  in  their  several  divisions,  with  the  intended  solemnity. 
—  "  Thou  shalt  set  thee  up  great  stones,  and  plaster  them  with  plaster  " 


492  DEUTER0N03IY  XXVII.   1.  — XXXIV,  12.  [LECT. 

believe,  was  the  view  that  Joshua  entertained  of  the 

command,  according  to  the  account  of  his  proceeding 

to  execute  it,  preserved  in  the  book  called  by  his  name. 

The  question  concerning  the  selection  of  the  twelve 

(2).  The  commentators  have  largely  debated  the  question,  what  could  be 
the  use  of  this  plaster  for  a  monumental  inscription,  designed,  as  they 
assume,  to  be  lasting.  One  will  have  it,  that  the  letters  were  raised  in 
black  stone,  in  relief,  and  that  the  plaster  between  was  intended  to  make 
them  more  conspicuous  ;  another,  that  it  was  used  to  cover  over  the  in- 
scription, to  the  end  that,  when  the  lime  decayed,  the  inscription  should 
be  revealed  to  a  future  age.  I  submit,  that  all  this  perplexity  grows  out 
of  a  misconception  of  the  spirit  of  the  arrangement  Had  Moses  directed, 
or  permitted,  an  expensive  altar  to  be  built,  and  carved  with  an  inscription 
suited  to  last,  a  great  idea  of  sanctity  at  least  would  have  attached 
to  it  There  would  have  been  danger,  that  he  would  be  considered  as 
fixing  the  place  of  worship  for  the  nation.  This  he  by  no  means  in- 
tended to  do  (compare  Deut  xii.  .5,  II,  21,  &c.) ;  it  was  a  point  upon 
which  he  always  held  himself  in  reserve.  Besides,  at  such  a  critical  period, 
he  would  by  no  means  have  been  willing  that  the  people  should  pause  in 
their  career  of  conquest,  to  finish  an  elaborate  work  of  art  Accordingly, 
with  reference  to  an  occasion  which  was  to  arise  for  an  altar  and  an 
inscription,  he  directs,  as  before  on  a  similar  occasion  (compare  xxvii.  5, 
6  ;  Ex.  XX.  24,  25  ;  xxiv.  4,  5),  that  the  former  shall  be  constructed  in  the 
rudest  manner,  and  the  latter  cut  in  a  substance  which  would  easily 
receive  an  inscription,  and  which  would  fall  to  pieces,  as  soon  as  it  had 
served  its  use.  —  Verse  2,  with  the  words,  "and  thou  shalt  write  upon  them 
all  the  words  of  this  law  "  (3),  are  a  brief  statement  of  what  is  directed, 
more  fully,  in  tlie  passage  extending  thence  to  verse  8.  —  In  3,  4,  the 
punctuation  in  our  version  is  bad.  From  "wften"  (beginning  a  period 
with  that  word)  we  should  read  as  follows ;  "  When  thou  art  passed  over, 

that  thou  mayest  go  in,  (3) then  (4)  it  shall  be,  when  ye  be  gone 

over  Jordan  "  &c.  —  "  In  Mount  Ebal  "  (4) ;  the  Samaritan  Pentateuch 
here  reads  Mount  Gerizim.  Which  is  the  true  lection,  has  been  a  ques- 
tion much  discussed.  Kennicott  preferred  the  Samaritan,  urging,  for 
instance,  that  Gerizim  was  the  mountain,  from  which  blessings  were  pro- 
nounced ;  that  the  fact  of  the  Samaritans  having  built  their  temple  after- 
wards on  Gerizim,  when  they  might  have  built  on  Ebal  as  well,  proves 
their  conviction  that  the  former  was  the  site  of  Moses'  altar ;  and  that 
Jotham  (Judges  ix.),  who  uttered  his  remonstrances  to  the  Shechemites 
from  Gerizim,  is  to  be  presumed  to  have  chosen  the  place  where  the  altar 
was  standing  or  had  stood.  All  which  has  been  retorted  as  follows  ;  that 
the  proper  place  for  the  altar  was  that,  whence  imprecations  were  to  be 
uttered ;  that  tlie  Samaritans  would  have  been  more  likely  to  choose 
Gerizim  for  their  temple,  as  being  a  blessed  spot,  than  Ebal,  as  being  tlie 


XX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  493 

offences  specified  to  be  the  subjects  of  so  many  impre- 
cations, in  preference  to  all  others,  would  seem  to  me 
at  once  more  important  and  more  perplexing,  did  I 
believe  the  received  opinion  to  be  correct,  that  the  in- 
scription of  them  Avas  intended  to  compose  a  permanent  * 
monument.  I  apprehend,  on  the  contrary,  that,  being 
made  upon  a  frail  material,  it  was  designed  only  to  serve 
a  temporary  use,  which  use  was  served  rather  by  the 
solemnity  of  the  ceremonial,  in  which  wickedness  in 
various  forms  was  condemned,  than  by  any  exact  se- 
lection of  such  forms,  on  the  principle  of  taking  those, 
which  were  most  criminal,  or  otherwise  most  dangerous. 
It  is  not  said,  that  the  altar  was  to  be  built  of  twelve 
stones,  —  the  number  of  the  tribes ;  —  but  as,  on  a 
former  occasion  of  a  similar  solemnity,  that  number  had 
been  expressly  prescribed,*  it  is  natural  to  suppose 
that  the  same  would  be  now  adopted.  If  twelve  stones 
were  to  form  the  altar,  it  follows,  that  each  was  to  be 
provided  with  an  inscription,  having  reference  to  some 

site  of  an  altar  erected  for  a  solemn  form  of  cursing,  as  well  as  that  the 
picturesque  beauty  of  Gerizim  might  decide  their  choice ;  and  that  Jotham 
was  not  in  circumstances  to  choose  his  position,  and,  if  he  had  chosen  it 
for  the  reason  supposed,  would  have  lost  all  the  advantage  thus  obtained, 
if  he  omitted,  as  he  does,  to  advert  to  the  fact.  —  "  Thou  shalt  build  an 

altar  unto  the  Lord  thy  God,  an  altar  of  stones  ; and  thou  shalt 

write  upon  the  stones  all  the  words  of  this  law"  (5-8).  I  could  not 
undertake  to  demonstrate  that  tlie  stones  inscribed  were  not,  as  many 
suppose,  one  thing,  and  the  altar  another ;  but  the  natural  and  probable 
interpretation  appears  to  me  to  be  decidedly  that  which  represents  them 
as  the  same.  (Compare  Josh.  viii.  30-32.)  —  In  xxvii.  9-13,  I  find  the 
beginning  of  the  direction  for  that  further  ceremonial  to  which  the  next 
chapter  relates.  Why  the  twelve  tribes  should  have  been  distributed  as 
they  are  (12,  13),  to  take  the  respective  parts  in  it,  I  suppose  that  we  have 
now  no  means  to  explain.  Some  of  the  commentators  remark,  that  the 
tribes  selected  to  bless,  are  all  descendants  of  Leah  and  Rachel,  the  free 
wives  of  Jacob,  while  the  other  party  is  composed  of  the  posterity  of  his 
bond-women,  along  with  that  of  Reuben,  who  had  fallen  into  disgrace 
with  his  father,  and  that  of  Zebulun,  the  youngest  son  of  Leah. 
*  Ex.  xxiv.  4,  5. 


494  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.   1.  — XXXIV.  12.  [LECT. 

crime  of  serious  magnitude.  Why,  in  this  collection, 
precisely  those  which  we  find  should  have  been  in- 
cluded, to  the  exclusion  of  some  others,  is  a  question, 
which,  it  is  true,  we  cannot  answer;  but,  also,  it  is  a 
question  which  the  circumstances  do  not  call  upon  us 
to  entertain.  The  ceremony  was  not  intended  to  em- 
body a  denunciation  of  crimes,  which  law,  in  the  com- 
mon course  of  its  administration,  would  be  able  to 
punish,  but  to  go  further,  and,  by  force  of  a  religious 
dread,  to  create  an  aversion  to  acts,  which,  being  done  in 
secret,  only  that  God,  whose  vengeance  w^as  imprecated 
upon  them,  might  be  able  to  detect.  Accordingly, 
each  of  the  curses  recorded  may  be  observed  to  relate 
to  some  evil-doer  of  that  class.  They  concern  not  the 
bold  idolatrous  worshipper,  but  "the  man  that  maketh 

any  graven  or  molten  image, and  putteth  it  in 

a  secret  place  " ;  not  the  undutiful  child,  guilty  of  out- 
rage or  insult,  but  him  "  that  setteth  light  by  his  father 
or  his  mother."  They  concern  him  who  stealthily  "  re- 
moveth  his  neighbour's  landmark";  who  deceives  the 
blind,  that  are  helpless  either  to  escape  or  expose  his 
treachery ;  the  secret  hired  assassin ;  the  ruffian,  who 
watches  for  a  clandestine  opportunity  to  assault  the 
weak ;  the  perfidious  judge,  whom  none  but  his  own 
conscience  can  convict.  They  concern  throughout  the 
perpetrator  of  some  deed  of  darkness.  The  spirit  of 
the  whole  transaction  is  a  national  adjuration,  to  this 
effect ;  Be  the  land,  where  Jehovah  has  now  planted 
his  people,  unstained  lienceforward,  not  only  by  any 
crime  which  its  law  may  punish,  but  by  any  which  the 
all-seeing  eye  of  its  God  may  discern.* 

In  the  twenty-eighth  chapter,  we  have  what  I  under- 
stand to  be  Moses'  du^ectory  for  the  second  part  of  the 

*  Deut.  xxvu.  14-26. 


XX.  J  DEUTERONOMY   XXVII.   1.  — XXXIV.  12.  495 

ceremonial,  intended  by  him  to  be  gone  through  by 
the  tribes,  on  their  first  occupation  of  the  country. 
The  Levites,  reading  from  the  stones  of  the  ahar,  having 
first  uttered  a  course  of  maledictions  against  the  per- 
petrators of  a  particular  class  of  sins,  to  each  of  which, 
the  people,  as  one  body,  was  with  one  acclamation  to 
respond,  —  the  tribes,  ranged  in  two  equal  divisions 
on  the  decUvities  of  two  opposite  mountains,  where  the 
vast  array  of  each  was  visible  to  the  other,  were  them- 
selves, with  their  foot  on  the  recovered  soil  of  their 
fathers,  and  in  the  open  face  of  Heaven,  to  pronounce 
alternate  benedictions  and  curses  on  themselves  and 
their  posterity,  according  as  their  divinely  given  law 
should  be  observed  or  transgressed.  It  may  strike  the 
reader,  that  in  giving  these  directions,  Moses  intended 
in  the  first  place  to  study  brevity  and  point,  saying  no 
more  than  what  would  be  suitable,  from  its  length,  to 
be  repeated  on  the  proposed  occasion  ;  and  accordingly 
the  benedictions  in  this  fist  *  are  reducible,  by  a  natural 
division,  to  the  same  number  with  the  curses,  just 
spoken  of,  designed  to  be  uttered  by  the  Levites,  and 
are,  at  the  beginning,  equally  concise.  But  as  he  pro- 
ceeds, his  heart  seems  to  warm  with  the  subject ;  he 
cannot  restrain  his  thronging  thoughts  and  overpowering 
emotions  within  such  limits ;  and,  when  he  comes  to 
that  part  of  his  arrangement  where  he  is  to  direct  the 
denunciation  of  those  calamities,  which  he  knew  that 
national  apostasy  would  entail,  his  whole  mind  appears 
to  be  possessed  and  overwhelmed  by  the  awful  pros- 
pect, and  he  rather  pours  out  his  own  strongly  excited 
feeUngs,  than  adheres  to  the  plan  with  which  his  dis- 
course had  begun.f  So  that  the  latter  part  of  these 
directions,  at  least,  it  would  seem  we  should  rather 
understand   as   a  statement  of  the  topics,  which   the 

*  Deut  xxviii.  2-14.  f  xxviii.  15-68. 


496  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  [LECT. 

proposed  solemnity  was  to  bring  to  view,  than  of  the 
form  in  which  they  were  to  be  presented,  —  a  form, 
which,  for  that  use,  would  need  to  be  more  condensed.* 
In  the  two  next  following  chapters,  Moses  is  repre- 
sented, apparently  in  a  different  discourse,  as  address- 
ing the  people  again  in  his  own  person,  in  a  similar 
strain,  first  briefly  recalling  to  their  remembrance  a  few 
instances  of  God's  goodness,  by  way  of  showing  his 
willingness  to  be  always  gracious,t  and  then  proceed- 

*  Yet  it  may  have  been,  that  they  were  intended  to  be  read  aloud  in 
their  whole  length,  by  some  individual,  each  sentence  being  appropriated 
by  the  tribes  appointed  for  the  service,  by  means  of  a  response  at  its 
close.  (Compare  Josh.  viii.  34,  35.)  —  I  have  never,  heretofore,  proposed 
to  illustrate  a  passage  by  supposing  a  transposition  of  parts  of  the  text. 
But,  in  the  present  instance,  I  cannot  suppress  the  conjecture,  that,  as 
originally  written,  xxvii.  14  immediately  followed  xxvii.  8,  the  passages  to 
which  they  respectively  belong  being  most  closely  connected  in  sense ; 
and  that  the  passage,  which  now  divides  tlaem,  (9  - 13)  followed  verse  26, 
being  the  introduction  to  the  second  part  of  the  proposed  ceremony  de- 
scribed above.  If  this  were  the  case,  the  abruptness  of  the  transition 
from  the  twenty-seventh  to  the  twenty-eighth  chapter,  would  be  much 
less  than  it  now  is  ;  and  I  may  add,  that  the  accident,  whatever  it  were, 
which  caused  such  a  dislocation,  may  also  well  have  occasioned  the  loss 
of  some  connecting  words,  which  seem  still  to  be  wanting.  Thus  much 
is  certain;  that  benedictions  and  maledictions  were  respectively  to  be 
"  put"  (Deut.  xi.  29 ;  literally  given,  —  uttered,  I  would  render)  on  Gerizim 
and  Ebal ;  that  (xxvii.  12,  13)  they  were  to  be  uttered  on  these  mountains, 
by  the  twelve  tribes,  six  standing  on  the  verge  of  each ;  that  of  the  six 
tribes  standing  on  Gerizim  to  bless,  Levi  (xxvii.  12)  was  one ;  yet  that 
Levi  (xxvii.  14)  was  to  pronounce  certain  curses  from  Ebcd  ;  —  the  obvi- 
ous way  of  understanding  all  which,  (since  there  are  two  sets  of  male- 
dictions,) is,  that  the  Levites,  in  their  sacerdotal  capacity,  were  upon  Ebal 
to  announce  one  (xxvii.  14-26),  and  afterwards  to  pass  over  to  Gerizim, 
to  assume  their  oflBce,  as  one  of  the  tribes,  in  blessing,  leaving  the  procla- 
mation of  the  other  curses  (xxviii.  15-68)  to  the  company  of  tribes  left  for 
the  purpose  upon  Ebal.  —  The  conjecture  at  the  beginning  of  this  note,  I 
present  merely  as  such.  My  view  of  the  sense  of  the  two  chapters  does 
not  demand  it  It  may  well  have  been,  that  Moses,  having  first  given  the 
outline  of  his  plan  in  botli  its  parts  (xxvii.  1-8,  9- 13)  should  then  revert 
to  the  first,  to  present  them  successively  more  in  detail  (14-26;  xxviii. 
1-68).  —  At  the  middle  of  xxviii.  2, 1  would  close  one  sentence,  and  begin 
another  ("  If  thou  shalt  hearken"  &.c.,) ;  with  xxviii.  1,  compare  15. 

t  xxix.  1-16.  —  Some  commentators  would  make  verse  1  the  close  of 


XX.]  DEUTERONOMY   XXVII.   1.  — XXXIV.    12.  497 

ing  to  urge  upon  them,  as  often  elsewhere,  the  momen- 
tous alternative  which  was  submitted  to  their  choice.* 
The  remark,  which  has  before  been  made  upon  such 
passages,  needs  only  to  be  here  repeated  in  relation  to 
this,  and  to  that  which  we  have  just  been  considering; 
viz.  that  the  promises  and  denunciations,  uttered  in  the 
bold  figurative  language  of  strong  emotion,  are  by  no 
means  such  as  to  justify  the  conclusion,  that  they  were 
to  be  fulfilled  by  any  miraculous  agency  of  God,  or  in 
any  other  way  than  in  that  regular  course  of  his  com- 
mon providence,  which,  following  causes  with  their 
proper  effects,  would  reward  a  nation  with  all  sorts  of 
prosperity,  when  it  faithfully  observed  a  law  divinely 
and  perfectly  contrived  to  advance  that  prosperity,  and 
punish  it,  when  it  neglected  or  abandoned  that  rule,  by 
the  infliction  of  those  evils  which  such  a  departure  from 
the  true  course  of  its  interest  would  itself  entail.  That 
is  to  say,  the  terms  of  such  promises  and  denunciations 
by  no  means  sustain  the  opinion,  —  whether  sustained  or 
not  by  other  facts  or  considerations,  —  that  a  miracu- 
lous administration  of  the  Jewish  affairs  continued 
through  the  ages  subsequent  to  that  miraculous  ad- 
ministration, under  which  Moses   gave  the  Law,  and 

the  preceding  passage ;  but  "the  covenant "  there  spoken  of  (exhibited, 
as  I  think,  in  the  words  of  Moses  which  follow)  was  to  be  made  in  "  the 
land  of  Moab";  and  compare  9,  12,  14.—  With  5  compare  p.  441, 
note  J.  —  "Ye  have  not  eaten  bread,  neither  have  ye  drunk  wine  "  (6) ; 
that  is,  regularly  and  abundantly  ;  for  they  had  had  both  in  the  wilderness 
(Ex.  x.xix.  40  ;  Lev.  vii.  12,  13).  —  The  argument  in  verses  8  and  9  is  as 
follows ;  "We  took  their  land"  (that  of  Sihon  and  Og)  by  Jehovah's  favor; 
obey  him  still,  "that  ye  may  prosper  in  cdl  that  ye  do,"  in  the  similar 
enterprise  which  is  now  before  you. 

*  Deut.  xxix.  17 -XXX.  20.  —  I  understand  xxix.  29,  as  follows  ;  The 
obedience,  which,  under  such  sanctions,  I  demand  from  you,  relates  to  the 
revelation  which  you  have  received  through  me.  With  %vhatever  things 
God  reserves  in  his  own  knowledge,  it  is  true  that  you  have  no  concern  ; 
but  those  which  he  hath  disclosed  expressly  for  your  observance,  you  have 
no  excuse  for  not  observing. 

VOL.  I.  63 


498  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  [LECT. 

established  the  commonwealth.  Nor  would  the  critic, 
w^ho  should  propose  to  expound  the  words  of  Moses,  in 
these  connexions,  on  the  basis  of  their  literal  import, 
find  it  possible  to  carry  out  such  an  interpretation  ;  so 
numerous  are  the  instances  of  the  use  of  language,  to 
which,  literally  taken,  nothing  can  be  found  to  corre- 
spond, in  the  more  recent  fortunes  of  the  Jewish  race.* 
Moses  now  proceeds  to  make  the  last  arrangements 
for  devolving  his  trust,  so  far  as  that  trust  was  still  to 
be  continued,  on  his  already  designated  successor.  He 
tells  the  people,  that,  being  by  age  disabled  for  such 
usefulness  as  the  times  required, ,  and  having  reached 
the  furthest  point  to  which  he  was  to  be  permitted  to 
advance,  he  has  no  more  to  do  than  to  commit  them  to 
the  divine  guidance,  and  to  that  of  their  new  leader, 
with  the  assurance,  that,  if  true  to  themselves,  they 
wbuld  be  divinely  strengthened  for  the  conquest,  which 
was  to  give  them  the  land  of  the  patriarchs  for  their 
secure  home,  and  for  the  scene,  if  they  would  have  it 
so,  of  their  future  glorious  history.f  To  their  leader  he 
repeated  a  solemn  charge  in  their  presence,  exhorting 
him  to  that  courage  which  became  his  station ;  J  and  com- 
mitted the  Law,  which  he  had  written,  to  the  custody 
of  the  "priests"  and  "elders,"  with  the  command  to 
perpetuate  a  universal  knowledge  of  its  contents  among 
the  people,  by  causing  it  to  be  publicly  read  in  their 
hearing,  on  the  recurrence  of  every  sabbatical  year, 
when  they  should  be  convened  at  the  Feast  of  Taber- 
nacles ;  —  a  season,  which,  by  its  exciting  associations, 
would  secure  to  the  truths  of  their  religion,  the  requisi- 

*  E.  g.  DeuL  xxviii.  22,  23,  24,  27,  35,  61 ;  xxix.  23. 

\  xxxi.  1-6.  —  "I  am  an  hundred  and  twenty  years  old "  (2) ;  com- 
pare p.  507,  note.  —  "  Joshua,  he  shall  go  before  thee,  as  the  Lord  hath 
said"  (3);  compare  Numb,  xxvii.  18. 

I  Deot  xxxi.  7,  8. 


XX.]       DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.       499 

tions  of  their  law,  and  the  wonders  of  their  history,  a 
strong  impression  on  their  minds.* 

Once  more ;  it  was  fit  that  before  the  venerable  min- 
ister of  God's  high  purposes  laid  down  his  charge,  there 

*  Deut.  xxx'u  9-13;  compare  xvii.  18.  — The  reader  will  remark,  that 
I  dd  not,  by  a  pelitio  principii,  represent  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  as  de- 
claring Moses  to  be  the  author  of  the  Pentateuch,  because  it  relates  him 
to  have  written  "  this  Law  "  (xxxi.  9 ;  compare  24,  26).  In  these  wri- 
tings, as  in  our  common  use,  the  word  law  means  either  a  single  provision 
(as  Gen.  xlvii.  26),  or  a  collection  of  provisions  relating  to  some  one  sub- 
ject or  more  (Lev.  xi.  46),  or  a  complete  code  (Psalm  i.  2) ;  and  which 
meaning  is  in  a  given  case  intended,  is  to  be  ascertained  from  the  context. 
Being  persuaded,  for  reasons  set  forth  at  large  in  this  volume,  that 
Moses  wrote  the  Pentateuch,  I  conclude  that  collection  to  be  "  the  law  " 
here  intended  ;  inasmuch  as  all  reasons,  which  led  him  to  compose  it,  would 
influence  him  equally  to  take  special  care  for  its  preservation  and  publica- 
tion, and  all  reasons,  which  would  impel  him  to  make  provision  for  the  safe 
keeping  and  publication  of  a  part,  (whatever  part  that  might  be,  to  which 
xxxi.  9  should  be  understood  to  refer,)  would  call  still  more  strongly  for 
the  same  provision  in  respect  to  the  whole  volume.  It  is  true,  that  some 
of  the  early  regulations  were  afterwards  modified  or  repealed.  But  the 
record  of  them  did  not  therefore  become  obsolete  and  useless.  Con- 
sidered simply  as  belonging  to  the  history  of  the  legislation,  they  had 
their  great  and  permanent  value  and  importance.  But,  besides,  they  were 
interwoven  into  a  history  of  the  divine  dealiQgs  with  the  nation,  which 
was  as  essential  to  be  known,  as  any  regulations.  As  to  the  original 
compendious  law  in  Exodus  (xx. -xxiii.),  it  is  remarkable,  (what,  however, 
I  have  nowhere  seen  remarked,)  that  no  one  of  its  provisions  was  after- 
wards repealed,  though  in  a  very  few  instances  (e.  g,  Ex.  xxi.  4,  7,) 
they  subsequently  received  a  greater  extension.  If  any  part  of  the  Law 
could  advantageously  be  spared  from  the  periodical  public  reading,  every 
one  would  say  that  it  was  the  book  of  Leviticus,  as  pertaining  especially 
to  that  ritual  which  was  the  charge  of  the  priesthood ;  yet  how  fit  was 
it,  that,  by  being  compelled  to  exhibit  this  portion  of  the  code,  at  such 
fntervals,  that  the  same  generation  would  hear  it  repeatedly,  they  should 
be  called  upon  to  give  satisfaction  to  the  people,  tliat  they  had  not  inter- 
polated it,  and  tliat  they  executed  their  functions  agreeably  to  its  provis- 
ions. The  view,  proposed  by  some  commentators,  that  the  book  of 
Deuteronomy  was  "  the  Law  "  intended  in  xxxi.  9-13,  appears  to  me  to 
have  been  taken  up  without  proper  consideration  of  the  structure  and  con- 
tents of  that  book,  which,  taken  by  itself,  presents  nothing  like  a  system. 
I  cannot  attach  any  importance  to  the  objection,  that  the  Law,  in  its 
larger  acceptation,  was  of  too  great  bulk  to  be  conveniently  read  in  eight 
days.     Certainly,  it  cannot  be  pretended  tliat  there  was  any  deficiency  of 


500  DEUTERONOMY   XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  [LECT. 

should  be  given  in  the  people's  view  (most  of  whom 
had  not  witnessed  his  first  acts  of  power)  an  attestation 
to  the  authority,  under  which  the  work,  now  about  to 
be  finished,  had  proceeded,  similar  to  what  had  been 
from  time  to  time  employed,  when  his  commission  was 
first  received.*  Attended  by  Joshua,  he  repaired,  by 
the  Divine  summons,  to  the  Tabernacle ;  and  there, 
while  a  supernatural  manifestation  betokened  the  Divine 
presence  to  the  people's  view,  and  gave  the  visible 
sanction  of  the  Divine  authority  to  the  provision  made 
for  their  future  government,  Joshua  received  his  charge 
respecting  the  execution  of  the  high  trust  he  was  under- 
taking,! and  to  both  was  dictated  a  warning  to  be  com- 
municated to  the  people,  respecting  the  inevitable  con- 
sequences of  future  disobedience,  which,  as  coming 
directly  from  their  Divine  benefactor,  and  under  such 
solemn  circumstances,  was  suited  to  have  all  the  effect 
on  their  minds,  which  could  be  exerted  by  remonstrance 
in  any  form.t  Departing  from  the  Tabernacle,  Moses 
resumed  the  "book  of  the  Law"  to  make  in  it  the 
further  important  record  of  the  admonition  which  he 
had  now  received,^  and  returning  it  to  the  Levites  to 
be  deposited  in  the  most  sacred  place  of  the  nation, 
"  by  the  side  of  the  ark  of  the  covenant,"  ||  he  convened 

time ;  of  course,  there  would  be  a  succession  of  readers ;  and  there  is  no 
reason  to  presume  that  the  audience  of  any  one  hour  would  be  precisely 
that  of  the  next 

^  Ex.  xxxiii.  9 ;  Numb.  xi.  25 ;  xii.  5. 

t  Deut.  xxxi.  14, 15, 23.  —  "He  gave  Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun,  a  charge" 
(23).  This  is  not  a  repetition  of  verse  7  ;  but  clearly,  I  think,  God  gave 
this  charge ;  for  the  verse  proceeds, "  Thou  shalt  bring  the  children  of  Israel 
into  the  land  which  /  sware  unto  them,  and  /  will  be  with  thee ; "  compare 
14.  The  transposition  which  this  interpretation  supposes  of  the  facts  re- 
corded in  verses  22,  23,  is  by  no  means  violent  Moses  merely  notes  (22), 
that  he  fulfilled  the  direction  which  concerned  himself  (16,  19),  before  he 
proceeds  to  mention  that  which  had  been  addressed  (23)  to  Joshua. 

t  xxxi.  16-21.  §  xxxi.  22.  ||  xxxi.  24 -27. 


XX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  501 

the  congregation  once  more  to  deliver  to  them  the  mes- 
sage with  which  he  and  Joshua  had  been  intrusted  ;  * 
after  which,  adding  a  few  earnest  and  persuasive  words,t 
he  withdrew  to  the  retirement  of  the  appointed  mountain, 
to  enjoy  one  distant  view  of  the  land  where  his  people 
were  now  ripe  for  establishing  their  divinely  instituted 
commonwealth,  and  then  to  rest  in  death  from  his  long 
labors.! 

*  Deut.  xxxi.  28,  29  ;  xxxii.  44,  45.  t  xxxii.  46,  47. 

t  xxxii.  48-52.  —  It  will  be  perceived,  from  the  representation  in  the 
paragraph  above,  that  I  apply  tlie  words  "this  song"  (xxxi.  19,21,22, 
xxxii.  44),  not,  as  is  commonly  done,  to  xxxii.  1-43,  but  to  xxxi.  16-18. 
That  the  word  rendered  "  song  "  may  with  propriety  be  used  of  such  a 
passage  as  that  last  named  (compare  Is.  v.  1),  I  suppose  no  one  would 
dispute  ;  and  tlie  whole  context,  in  my  view,  dictates  the  conclusion,  that 
it  is  so  used.  Upon  this  interpretation,  God  addresses  to  Moses  a  brief 
and  solemn  admonition  for  the  people  respecting  their  future  course, — 
an  admonition  obviously  suitable  in  every  point  of  view,  in  length,  in 
substance,  in  tone,  and  in  form,  for  its  intended  office,  commanding 
him  to  "  teach  it "  to  them,  and  "  put  it  in  their  mouths  " ;  which  he  pres- 
ently proceeds  to  do  (Deut  xxxi.  22,  28  ;  xxxii.  44,  45),  having  first  taken 
care  (xxxi.  22 ;  compare  24)  to  make  it  part  of  the  written  record.  By 
the  received  exposition,  the  directions  and  statement  concerning  "  this 
song,"  in  xxxi.  19-22,  are  severed  from  the  close  connexion  in  which  they 
stand  with  16-18,  and  made  to  refer  to  another  passage,  which,  of  course, 
God  is  then  represented  as  having  in  the  first  place  himself  delivered,  and 
then  commanded  the  children  of  Israel  to  learn ;  though  its  length  appears 
to  make  it  altogether  unsuitable  for  the  latter  use,  and  (what  is  more  to 
the  purpose)  its  contents  are  not  such  as  to  correspond  with  the  view  of 
its  being  a  message  from  the  Deity.  As  to  the  latter  point,  it  is  not  only 
that  single  expressions  are  clearly  the  language  of  a  devout  worshipper 
of  Jehovah,  and  are  incapable  of  being  referred  to  Jehovah  himself  (e.  g. 
xxxii.  3, 31),  and  that  in  parts  (20-27,  37-42)  the  composition  itself  intro- 
duces the  Lord  as  speaking,  (a  positive  indication  of  the  diflFerent  source 
of  the  composition,  which  contains  those  episodes,)  but  its  whole  tone, 
verbose,  discursive,  gorgeous,  and  expressive  of  human  feelings,  is  so 
widely  adverse  to  any  easy  conception  of  that  Divine  message  (given 
under  well  defined  circumstances)  which  the  common  exposition  repre- 
sents it  to  be,  that  I  do  not  perceive  how  a  careful  reader  can  recognise 
any  verisimilitude  in  that  view. 

This  brings  us  to  the  question,  Where  does  the  record  of  Moses  end  ? 
That  it  ends  somewhere  before  the  end  of  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  (as  that 
book  exists  in  our  hands),  I  suppose  no  one  who  entertains  the  question, 
would  now  deny ;  though  there  have  been  critics,  who,  in  their  zeal  for 


502  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.   1.  — XXXIV.  12.  [LECT. 

The  writer,  who  has  continued  the  record  after  the 
final  entry  in  it  by  Moses'  hand,  has  preserved  for  us 
some  of  his  later  words,  probably  as  he  (inderstood 
them  to  have  been  remembered  and  reported  by  those 

the  integrity  of  the  Pentateuch,  have  maintained  that  Moses  wrote  pro- 
phetically, in  the  thirty-fourth  chapter,  of  his  death  and  burial.  If  his 
record  closed  before  the  end  of  the  present  book,  how  much  before  ?  •  It 
is  a  question  which  cannot  be  positively  answered.  I  have  little  hesita- 
tion in  ascribing  the  thirty-third  chapter,  as  well  as  the  thirty-fourth,  to  a 
later  hand,  not  only  because  its  contents  appear  to  be  represented  as 
Moses'  last  words  (which  he  who  utters  them  can  hardly  be  supposed 
himself  to  record),  but  for  other  reasons  to  be  mentioned  presently. 
These  chapters  being  left  out  of  the  question,  I  am  doubtful  at  which  of 
two  points  to  place  the  limit  of  Moses'  writing.  I  find  every  reason  for 
carrying  it  as  far  forward  as  the  entry  of  the  important  transaction  at  the 
Tabernacle,  which  no  person  but  himself  and  Joshua  could  record,  from 
personal  knowledge  ;  that  is,  to  the  end  of  xxxi.  23.  That  in  the  act  of 
delivering  the  volume  to  the  Levites,  he  should  himself  make  the  record 
of  the  important  fact  of  this  delivery,  and  its  reason  (24  -  27),  and  that, 
before  he  resigned  the  book,  he  should  add,  in  a  few  words,  a  statement 
of  the  command,  which  at  the  same  time  he  was  giving  them,  to  con- 
voke the  people  for  his  last  public  act,  viz.  the  annunciation  to  them  of  the 
Divine  message,  which,  in  their  view,  he  had  just  been  receiving  for  that 
purpose  (28,  29),  appears  to  me  in  a  high  degree  probable.  I  suppose 
then,  either  that  his  record  terminated  at  that  point,  or  else  that  he  pro- 
ceeded so  much  further,  as  to  add,  in  xxxii.  44  -  52,  an  account  of  his  per- 
formance of  this  duty,  of  the  brief  address  with  which  he  followed  it,  and 
of  the  summons,  now  to  be  obeyed,  which  called  him  away  to  the  vision 
of  Canaan,  and  to  his  death.  Without  pretending  to  decide  any  thing, 
still,  in  the  fulness  with  which  this  last  topic  is  set  forth,  in  the  tone  of 
exultation  for  the  people's  prospects,  and  of  compunction  and  melancholy 
for  his  own,  in  the  allusion  to  the  brother  departed  before  him,  and  the 
expression  of  satisfaction,  that,  if  Canaan  is  not  to  be  reached  by  him,  it 
is  yet  to  be  seen,  I  find  that  which  inclines  me  to  refer  this  record,  also, 
to  Moses'  own  hand. 

In  either  case,  I  understand  the  passage  xxxii.  1-43,  with  its  inscrip- 
tion (xxxi.  30),  to  be  a  later  addition.  Still,  it  may  have  been  a  composi- 
tion of  Moses  ; — no  considerations  I  have  presented  imply  any  thing  to 
the  contrary,  nor  is  any  important  argument  to  that  effect  brought  to  view 
by  an  examination  of  its  language  ;  —  it  may  have  been,  I  say,  an  inde- 
pendent composition,  not  intended  for  the  place  where  it  stands,  and 
having  nothing  to  do  with  xxxi.  19,  21,  22.  If  it  were  so,  we  are  aided  to 
conjecture  how  it  came  to  be  interpolated  where  we  find  it  Some  pos- 
sessor of  it,  recognising  it  as  Moses'  work, imaginii^  (perhaps)  that,  being 
80,  it  must  originally  have  belonged  to  his  larger  work,  the  Pentateuch,  and 


XX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  603 

who  attended  upon  his  retirement  mto  the  mountain, 
and  his  last  hours.*  Out  of  the  view  of  the  host,  he 
was  laid  in  a  grave  prepared  in  a  hollow  of  the  hilly 
region  where  he  died.     Had  the  spot  been  known,  it 

fancying  that  the  sense  of  xxxi.  22,  28,  xxxii.  44,  &c.,  wfis  left  incom- 
plete, (for  want  of  perceiving  their  true  connexion  with  xxxi.  16-18,) 
naturally  fixed  on  this  place  to  incorporate  it  with  that  collection.  And 
this,  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose,  was  done  at  a  period,  considerably  sub- 
sequent to  the  death  of  Moses,  such  as  to  give  time  for  the  true  meaning 
of  xxxi.  16-22,  to  be  lost  sight  of 

*  Deut.  xxxiii.  1-29.  The  date  of  the  addition  of  this  passage  to 
the  book,  we  liave  no  means  of  ascertaining.  Its  obvious  incomplete- 
ness, and  want  of  proportion,  the  fulness  with  which  it  represents  some 
tribes  to  have  been  discoursed  upon,  (8-11,  13-17,)  while  others,  as 
Dan  (22)  and  Reuben  (6),  are  despatched  with  the  briefest  notice,  and 
one,  Simeon,  is  entirely  passed  by,  —  while  it  indicates,  on  the  one  hand, 
that  we  have  not  the  full  account  of  what  Moses  said  on  the  occasion  in 
question,  —  seems  to  me  to  show,  on  the  other,  to  a  considerable  degree 
of  probability,  that  the  composition  consists  of  what  a  tradition  (not 
transmitted  without  corruptions)  had  actually  preserved  of  his  last  dis- 
courses (1);  since,  if  the  passage  were  merely  a  work  of  imagination  in 
some  after  time,  it  would  have  been  easy  and  natural  to  give  it  the  finish 
and  coherence  which  it  wants.  And  that  what  thus  remains,  was  pre- 
served not  as  a  whole,  but  in  parts,  put  together  at  a  later  time,  might  be 
not  unreasonably  inferred  from  the  fact,  that  each  of  the  blessings  (un- 
less that  of  Reuben  be  an  exception,  of  which  presently)  has  its  own  in- 
troduction, not  in  words  of  Moses,  but  in  the  narrative  form ;  e.  g.  "  Of 
Levi  he  said"  (8) ;  "And  of  Benjamin  he  said"  (12)  &c.  The  fragmen- 
tary character  of  the  passage,  together  with  our  ignorance  of  its  history, 
and  of  the  force  of  the  allusions,  of  which  it  seems  to  be  full,  causes  it, 
in  parts,  to  bid  defiance  to  exposition  ;  nor  have  the  large  labors  of  the 
commentators  upon  it,  done  much  more  than  largely  illustrate  the  fact  of 
its  obscurity.  —  "And  he  said"  (2) ;  this,  with  what  follows  in  verses  2, 
3,  I  take  to  be  the  introduction  to  the  blessing  of  Reuben  (6),  making  it 
thus  correspond  with  the  rest,  in  the  particular  just  above  mentioned. — 
"The  Lord  came  from  Sinai,  and  rose  up  from  Seir  unto  them  ;  he  shined 
forth  from  Mount  Paran"  (2);  that  is,  I  suppose,  he  revealed  himself  at 
Sinai  to  the  people,  and  made  his  revelations  more  and  more  clearly  to 
them  as  they  advanced  on  their  way  ;  the  words  which  I  have  italicized 
have  a  peculiar  force,  being  appropriately  used  of  the  rising  and  course  of 
the  sun.  —  "  He  came  with  ten  thousands  of  saints " ;  this  translation  is 
disputed,  but  I  believe  it  to  be  the  correct  one,  (compare  3  ;  Ex.  xix.  6; 
Numb.  xvi.  3,)  and  that  it  means,  He  graciously  accompanied  his  numer- 
ous people.  —  "From  his  right  hand  [his  divine  energy]  went  a  fiery 
[potent]  law  for  them ; "  this,  again,  1  adopt  for  the  true  rendering,  not- 


504  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  [LECT. 

would  have  become  first  the  goal  of  pious  pilgrimages, 
and  then,  perhaps,  —  by  the  apotheosis  of  one  so  ven- 
erated,—  a  scene  of  idolatrous  worship.  It  required 
the  self-renouncing  spirit  which  all  his  Ufe  had  displayed, 

withstanding  the  question  which  has  been  raised  upon  the  word  nn  .  — 
"  He  loved  the  people ;  all  his  [its]  saints  are  in  thy  hand  "  &.c.  (3) ;  this 
abrupt  change  of  persons  is  not  uncommon  in  the  more  animated  Hebrew 
poetry,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter ;  the  sense  I  understand  to  be,  Loving 
them  all  alike,  tliou  hast  graciously  adopted  them  to  be  tliy  care,  and  to 
sit  "  at  thy  feet,"  and  "  receive  of  thy  words,"  which  accordingly  they 
may  all  do.  — "Moses"  &c.  (4,  5):  tliese  two  verses,  which  ought  to  be 
thrown  into  a  parenthesis,  I  regard  as  having  been  originally  a  marginal 
remark,  intended  to  illustrate  verses  2  and  3.  The  "law,"  (n^),  —  says 
this  annotator  (4),  —  spoken  of  in  verse  2,  is  the  law  (rr^in)  which  is  now 
[at  the  time  when  he  was  writing]  the  valued  "  inheritance  of  the  con- 
gregation of  Jacob,"  the  same  law  which  "  Moses  commanded  us,"  he, 
who  "  was  king  in  Jeshurun  when  tlie  heads  of  the  people,  and  the  tribes 
of  Israel,  were  gathered  together "  (5),  he  who  was  invested  with  the 
highest  authority  over  the  whole  collective  nation  [this  last  clause  being 
intended  to  explain  the  important  word  saints  in  verses  2  and  3].  —  "Let 
Reuben  live,  and  not  die  ;  and  let  not  his  men  be  few"  (6).  Here  is  the 
place  where,  after  tlie  very  vague  benediction  of  Reuben,  we  look  for  some 
notice  of  Simeon,  but  find  none ;  nor  do  the  attempts  to  explain  the  fact 
by  a  comparison  of  the  notices  of  that  tribe  in  Numb.  i.  23 ;  xxvi.  14 ; 
1  Chron.  iv.  27,  amount  to  any  thing,  except  to  give  a  degree  of  plausi- 
bility to  conjectural  emendations  (should  one  incline  to  make  them)  of  the 
latter  clause,  which,  by  altering  one  word  ('H")  to  'H')),  and  inserting 
another  (p;>:pB'),  would  make  it  read,  "and  let  Simeon  [too]  live,  [though] 
his  men  are  few."  Two  or  three  manuscripts  of  the  Septuagint, — 
whether  on  any  better  ground  than  conjecture,  we  know  not,  —  insert 
here  the  word  Ivfttii.  Our  translators,  in  the  interpolation  of  not,  (itali- 
cized by  them,  agreeably  to  their  method  of  indicating  that  a  word  intro- 
duced has  nothing  corresponding  in  the  Hebrew.)  have  adopted  a  singular 
expedient  to  reconcile  their  preconceived  opinion  of  what  the  sense  ought 
to  be,  with  their  view  (probably  a  correct  one,  compare  Is.  x.  19)  of  the 
sense  of  the  word  "i3Dp.  — "This is  the  blessing  of  Judah"  &c.  (7);  the 
few  general  words,  which  here  follow,  imploring  success  in  war,  and 
pros|)erous  returns  from  it,  for  this  tribe,  have  a  degree  of  resemblance  to 
the  first  of  those  represented  to  have  been  addressed  by  Jacob  to  its  pro- 
genitor in  Gen.  xlix.  8-  12.  From  this  point  it  may  be  remarked,  that 
with  the  exceptions  of  Reuben  and  Gad,  (which  cannot  he  brought  into 
the  consideration,  as  all  their  territory  lay  east  of  the  Jordan,)  Moses 
mentions  the  tribes  substantially  in  the  order,  ftKoa  south  to  north,  in 
which  they  were  afterwards  established  in  Canaan  ;  which  fact,  could  we 


f 


XX.]  DEUTERONOMY   XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  505 

to  forbid  that  the  place  of  his  last  rest  should  be  visited 
by  the  coming  generations,  who  would  have  such  cause 
to  revere  and  bless  his  name.  But,  true  to  his  office 
to  the  last,  he  would  permit  no  honors  to  his  memory, 

know  that  the  order  of  his  discourse  was  preserved  in  our  record,  would 
indicate,  that  the  districts  for  the  occupation  of  the  several  tribes,  were 
already  determined.  (Compare  p.  417,  note  ff.)  We  should  understand 
him,  while  he  surveyed  the  country  from  an  eminence,  or  when  he  had 
just  been  surveying  it,  to  utter  his  benediction  on  one  tribe  after  another, 
as  his  eye  successively  rested  on  the  regions  which  they  were  severally 
to  inhabit — "  Of  Levi  he  said,  'Let  thy  Urim  and  thy  Thummim '  "  &c. 
(8  -  11).  By  all  means,  I  conceive  we  should  regard  these,  as  well  as  the 
preceding  verses,  as  being  addressed  to  God ;  Let  the  highest  insig- 
nia of  thy  instituted  priesthood  remain  with  thy  holy  tribe,  "  whom  thou 
didst  prove  "  &.c.  God  proved  [tried]  that  tribe  with  the  rest  at  Massah, 
(compare  Ex.  xvii.  7,)  where,  perhaps,  they  were  found  less  discontented 
than  others,  though  that  fact  is  not  related;  and  he  strove  with  them, 
when  he  rebuked  their  head  (compare  Numb.  xx.  12,  13)  "  at  the  waters 
of  Meribah,"  "Who  said  unto  his  father  and  to  his  mother,  'I  have 
not  seen  him ' "  &c.  (9) ;  that  is  (allowing  for  the  poetical  clothing  of  the 
thought),  who  evinced  their  zeal  to  Jehovah,  by  faithfully  acquitting  them- 
selves of  that  stern  duty,  which  required  them  to  forget  the  ties  of  blood. 
Compare  Ex.  xxxil  27,  28.  —  From  a  supposed  reference,  in  verse  12, 
to  the  erection  of  the  temple-  at  Jerusalem,  on  the  border  of  the  territory 
of  Benjamin,  an  argument  has  been  sought,  to  show  that  the  passage  was 
written  later  tlian  tlie  time  of  Solomon,  But  I  tliink  it  quite  unsafe  to 
assume  so  much  as  the  fact  of  any  such  reference  being  intended  in  the 
verse.  It  is  very  naturally  understood  as  simply  a  general  invocation  of 
the  Divine  protection  for  Benjamin.  "  He  [Benjamin]  shall  dwell  be- 
tween his  [the  Lord's]  shoulders";  ^ucut,  in  his  bosom;  the  expression 
is  of  the  same  class  with  that  in  Matt.  xxiiL  37.  —  "  And  of  Joseph  he 
said  "  &c.  (13-17).  Here,  in  13-16,  is  a  distinct  imitation  of  the  bless- 
ing pronounced  by  Jacob  upon  tlie  same  tribe ;  compare  Gen.  xlix.  25, 
26.  Three  of  those  verses,  and  part  of  the  fourth,  refer  to  the  fertility  and 
the  mineral  wealth  of  the  region  wliich  the  descendants  of  Joseph  were 
to  occupy ;  compare  a  remark  above,  on  verse  7.  "  The  deep  that  couch- 
eth  beneath"  (13);  that  is,  the  subterranean  springs,  by  which,  as  well  as 
by  "  the  dew "  from  above,  vegetation  would  be  refreshed.  "  The  pre- 
cious things  put  forth  by  the  moon"  (14);  perhaps  some  vivifying  virtue 
was  ascribed  to  the  lunar  influences,  or  the  reference  is  merely  to  plants, 
the  rapid  growth  of  one  or  a  few  months,  as  distinguished  from  annual 
products  mentioned  in  the  preceding  clause.  "  For  the  good  will  of  him 
that  dwelt  in  the  bush";  compare  Ex.  iii.  2.  "  His  glory  "  &.c.  (17);  this 
powerful  tribe  being  ditided  into  two  branches,  those  of  Ephraim  and 

VOL.  I.  64 


506  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  [LECT. 

on  the  part  of  those  who  owed  him  so  much,  to  prove 
a  snare  to  their  virtue ;  the  secret  of  his  burial-place 
died  with  those  who  consigned  him  to  it ;  and  "  no 
man,"  says  the  historian,  in  the  simply  plaintive  ex- 

Manasseh,  its  strength  is  compared  to  that  of  the  two  horns  of  a  firstling 
[a  choice]  bullock,  or  of  a  buffalo,  not  a  tmicorn,  as  the  word,  after  some 
ancient  versions,  is  unfortunately  rendered  by  our  translators.  —  "And  of 
Zebulun  he  said  "  &c.  (18,  19);  in  the  first  of  these  verses,  and  the  latter 
half  of  the  second,  we  may  find  allusions  to  the  anticipated  habits  of  the 
Zebulunites,  as  mariners  and  fishermen,  (tliat  tribe  being  about  to  be 
established  between  the  Mediterranean  Sea  and  that  of  Gennesareth ; 
compare  Gen.  xlix.  13,)  and  to  agricultural,  or  perhaps  manufacturing, 
pursuits  of  the  children  of  Issachar.  We  may  imagine  applications  of  tlie 
language  in  the  first  half  of  verse  19  (as,  for  instance,  that  they  refer  to 
an  expected  designation  of  the  lofty  Mount  Tabor,  on  the  confines  of 
Issachar  and  Zebulun,  to  be  the  seat  of  the  national  worship) ;  but  I  sup- 
pose we  have  no  means  to  determine  its  sense.  —  "And  of  Gad  he  said" 
&c.  (20).  Respecting  what  is  said  of  Gad,  I  am  fain  to  repeat  the 
last  remark.  I  obtain  no  satisfaction  from  the  attempts  which  have 
been  made  to  illustrate  it.  It  probably  contains  allusions  to  facts,  well 
known  at  the  time  when  it  was  written,  but  which  the  history  has  not 
preserved ;  though  I  would  not  deny  that  verse  20  may  refer  to  the  settle- 
ment of  that  tribe  in  part  of  the  territory,  first  occupied,  east  of  Jordan, 
and  to  the  obligation  which  still  lay  upon  it  to  come  with  "  the  heads  of 
the  people"  to  prosecute  the  war  in  Canaan:  compare  Numb,  xxxii.  31, 
32.  —  "  And  of  Dan  he  said  "  &c.  (22) ;  all  that  can  be  safely  suggested 
concerning  this,  is  the  conjecture,  that  the  hUly  country  lately  conquered 
from  Og,  being  known  to  harbour  lions,  (Cant  iv.  8,)  the  tribe  of  Dan,  for 
its  vigor  and  activity,  is  compared  to  the  "  lion's  whelp,  which  leaps  in 

Bashan."  —  "  Of  Naphtali  he  said *  Possess  thou  the  icest  and  the 

soufh ' "  (23) ;  more  literally,  (and  necessarily  here,  if  we  are  to  reconcile 
the  statement  with  the  fact,)  "the  sea  and  the  south."  The  tribe  of  Naph- 
tali actually  occupied  not  the  southwestern,  but  a  northeastern,  district  of 
the  Holy  Land  (Josh.  xix.  32-39).  But  they  possessed  the  sea  of  Gen- 
nesareth, along  whose  western  shore  their  territory  lay  ;  and  they  might  be 
said  to  possess  the  south  in  relation  to  the  tribe  of  Dan  (last  before  men- 
tioned) one  of  whose  settlements  lay  to  the  north  of  them  (Judges  xviii. 
27, 28).  Le  Clerc  (ad  loc.)  ingeniously  conjectures,  that,  for  Dn"\i  D^,  the 
sea  and  the  south,  we  should  read  nnD  D'^.the  sea, or  lake,  Merom  [com' 
pare  Josh.  xi.  5),  which,  actually,  the  tribe  of  Naphtali  did  possess.  — 
"And  of  Asher  he  said"  &c.  (24,  25);  this  description  of  wealth  and 
prosperity  is  in  the  former  of  the  two  verses  modelled  on  the  parallel 
passage  in  Gen.  xlix.  20 ;  "Thy  bars  [or  bolts,  not  thy  shoes]  shall  be  iron 
and  brass  "  (25),  is  language  denoting  a  condition  of  security ;  and  "  As  is 


XX.]  DEUTERONOMY   XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  507 

pression  of  a  natural  feeling,  "  no  man  knoweth  of  his 
sepulchre  unto  this  day."  —  The  book  concludes  with  a 
brief  notice  of  the  funeral  obsequies,  prolonged  through 
thirty  days  "in  the  plains  of  Moab,"  and  of  the  acces- 
sion of  Joshua  to  the  place  of  civil  and  military  head 
of  the  people ;  the  office  which  Moses  sustained,  as  a 
supernaturally  endowed  and  divinely  instructed  teacher, 
having  continued  vacant  since  his  death.* 

thy  day,  so  may  thy  strength-  be,"  is  a  wish  that  the  power  or  wealth  of 
the  tribe  may  continually  increase  with  advancing  time.  —  "There  is  none 
like  unto  the  God  of  Jcshurun"  (26,  compare  5;  xxxii.  15;  Is.  xliv. 
2) ;  this  name,  clearly  used  for  Israel,  appears  to  be  an  abridgment  of 
the  form  which  the  latter  word  would  take  Avith  the  termination  appropri- 
ate to  a  diminutive  sense;  p'^'  for  pSs'ii?'. 

•  Deut  xxxiv.  1-12.  —  In  1  -  3,  again,  we  have  a  specification  of  parts 
of  the  country,  agreeably  to  the  order  in  which  the  tribes  named,  actual- 
ly had  their  settlements ;  but  here  the  survey  proceeds  from  north  to 
south.  — "The  land  of  Gilead,  unto  Dan"  (1).  The  Danites  did  not 
establish  themselves  in  tliis  neighbourhood  till  the  time  of  the  Judges 
(Judges  xviii.  29) ;  a  fact,  which  bears  upon  the  question  of  the  period 
when  this  passage  was  written.  —  "So  Moses,  the  servant  of  the  Lord, 
died  "  (5),  —  by  what  kind  of  euthanasia,  we  know  not,  —  "  and  he  buried 
him"  (6);  rather,  one  buried  him,  or  he  was  buried ;  it  is  the  common  form 
of  the  Hebrew  impersonal.  —  "Over  against  Beth-Peor";  compare  iii.  29  j 
iv.  46. — "  But  no  man  knoweth  of  his  sepulchre  rmto  this  day''^ ;  indicat- 
ing that  a  considerable  time  had  elapsed  between  his  burial  and  this 
record;  compare  10.  —  "And  Moses  was  an  hundred  and  twenty  years 
old,  when  he  died  "(7;  compare  Ex.  vii.  7).  So  Aaron  is  said  (Numb, 
xxxiii.  39)  to  have  been  "  an  hundred  and  twenty  and  three  years  old, 
when  he  died  in  Mount  Hor."  To  Miriam  too,  if  her  age  was  about  the 
same  with  that  of  her  brothers,  the  narrative  would  ascribe  a  like  extreme 
longevity,  if  it  clearly  represented  her  as  dying  in  the  same  year  with 
them,  that  is,  the  fortieth  after  the  Exodus ;  but  I  have  endeavoured  to 
show  above,  (p.  374,  note,)  that  this  by  no  means  appears  to  have  been  the 
case.  If,  then,  we  could  rely  on  the  integrity  of  the  text  in  these  pas- 
sages, (which,  after  what  has  been  remarked  repecting  other  instances 
where  numbers  are  concerned,  one  hardly  feels  safe  in  doing,)  we  should 
have  the  statement,  that  two  individuals,  those  who  had  been  promoted  to 
the  highest  trusts  in  the  Jewish  nation,  had  their  lives  prolonged  to  the 
term  of  about  a  hundred  and  twenty  years.  If  it  were  so,  we  can  do  no 
more  than  conjecture  the  reason.  It  may  have  been,  because  it  was  well 
for  the  Israelites  to  enjoy,  down  to  the  last  period  of  their  wanderings, 
the  guidance  of  those  who  had  led  them  forth  from  bondage,  and  to  whose 


608  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  [LECT. 

In  examining  the  record  of  the  revelation  made 
through  Moses,  we  have  not  found  that  he  anywhere 
represents  himself  as  charged  with  the  disclosure  of  the 
great  doctrine  of  a  future  life,  or  refers  to  its  retribu- 
tions as  providing  a  sanction  for  his  laws.  Further; 
without  moving  the  question,  at  this  stage  of  our  in- 
quiries, how  far  there  are  traces  in  the  Old  Testament, 
of  a  belief  in  that  doctrine,  I  shall  take  no  risk  of  con- 
tradiction, when  I  say,  that  nowhere,  throughout  the 
series  of  books,  is  it  referred  to  as  having  made  a 
subject  of  divine  revelation.*  Undoubtedly,  the  fact  is 
remarkable  ;  and  a  very  few  words  respecting  the 
light  in  which  it  is  to  be  viewed,  may  not  be  con- 
sidered to  be  here  out  of  place. 

It  may  be  presumed,  that  the  Israelites,  when  they 

authority  they  were  accustomed;  and  the  circumstance  could  not  have 
failed  to  attract  a  strong  veneration  to  Aaron  and  Moses,  among  a  people 
who  revered  age  as  did  the  Jews.  Certainly,  there  is  nothing  incredible 
in  the  statement,  apart  from  the  supposition  of  miracle.  The  age  alleged 
is  very  uncommon,  but  not  unprecedented ;  and  events,  singly  within  the 
course  of  nature,  do  undoubtedly  sometimes  occur  in  such  wonderful 
combinations,  that  if  not  sustained  by  the  strongest  evidence,  the  state- 
ment of  them  would  be  received  with  great  distrust.  A  remote  posterity, 
for  example,  will  not  improbably  be  inclined  to  treat  as  a  fable,  contrived 
for  effect,  the  fact,  so  notorious  to  us,  that  of  the  individuals,  who  pre- 
pared the  document  which  gave  independence  to  this  country,  the  only 
two  who  afterwards  filled  the  highest  office  of  the  government  they  had 
erected,  both  died  on  the  exact  day  when  a  half  century  from  that  act  of 
theirs  was  completed.  —  At  all  events,  there  is  no  room  for  any  inference 
from  the  ago  of  Aaron  and  Moses,  respecting  the  common  length  of 
human  life  at  that  period.  On  the  contrary,  the  whole  spirit  of  the  ar- 
rangement for  the  Israelites  to  wander  forty  years  in  the  wilderness,  in 
order  for  a  new  generation  to  take  the  place  of  those  already  included 
in  the  census,  points  to  sixty  years  as  the  received  term  of  life  ;  and  the 
scale  in  Lev.  xxvii.  3-7,  specifying  no  higher  age  than  sixty  years, 
affords  ground  for  a  similar  conclusion. 

*  The  tliesis  of  Bishop  Warburton,  on  this  point,  is  of  this  compre- 
hensiveness;  that  "the  Israelites,  from  the  time  of  Moses  to  the  time  of 
their  captivity,  had  vot  the  doctrine  of  a  future  state  of  reward  and  pun- 
ishment" "Divine  Legation  9^  &c.,  book  5,  §  (S%- How  the  later  Jews 
proved  it,  may  be  seen  in  Pearson's  "  Exposition  of  the  Creed,"  Art.  11. 


f 


6 


XX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.   1.-^  XXXIV.  12.  509 

came  out  of  Egypt,  entertained  the  views  respecting  a 
future  state,  which  prevailed  in  that  country.  If  it  was 
so,  I  think  we  have  substantial  reason  to  conclude,  that 
a  divine  revelation  of  the  truth  of  an  existence  beyond 
the  grave,  would,  in  the  actual  state  of  their  minds, 
have  done  them  no  good ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  would 
have  been  so  hkely  to  be  perverted  by  them,  and 
mingled  with  the  grossest  errors,  that  it  was  for  their 
advantage  to  have  that  revelation  withheld,  till  such 
time  as,  having  become  established  in  a  true  theology, 
educated  in  the  doctrine  of  one  God,  and  trained  to 
some  just  conceptions  of  his  attributes  and  agency, 
they  would  be  prepared  to  receive  the  other  doctrine 
with  some  just  estimation  of  its  worth,  and  preserve  it 
in  some  degree  of  purity. 

Respecting  the  belief  of  the  ancient  Egyptians  in 
the  state  of  the  human  soul  after  death,  it  would  not 
be  reasonable  to  expect  to  obtain  full  satisfaction  from 
such  sources  of  information  as  remain  to  us.  The 
supposition,  however,  that  any  reasonable  views  of  its 
condition  were  entertained  by  a  people,  whose  theology 
was  so  monstrous,  would  be  in  violation  of  all  proba- 
bility ;  and,  in  fact,  the  best  authorities  instruct  us, 
that,  whatever  might  be  the  esoteric  doctrine  on  the 
subject  (which  probably  amounted  to  no  more  than  the 
resumption  of  the  spirit  into  its  divine  source,  and 
accordingly  its  loss  of  individual  existence,  and  of  the 
capacity  of  punishment  and  reward),  the  popular  doc- 
trine indissolubly  connected  the  continued  life  of  the 
soul  with  a  metempsychosis,  with  a  circuit  of  transfers 
from  the  body  of  one  animal  to  that  of  another.* 

*  Ttv  niftarts  i\  xxra^liietrBf,  i(  bXX*  Xutt  tilii  yifi/itntf  iriitrtti  *  i-rtiit  ii 
riPilXfi^  vairm  rx  j^ietrala  xa)  ra  BaXavria  kx)  tx  Tirinx,  xvrtf  i;  kiSatnetu 
tufjLX  yitiftito  troumi '  r^?  vtemf^uri*  at   xiiry  yltirSxi  tc  Tfirp^iXUin  Irtri,  x.  t.  X. 

Herodotus,  /s\  123.    See  Brucker's  "  Historia  Critica  Philosophiffi,"  lib.  2, 
cap.  7,  §  18  ;  "  Universal  History,"  book  3,  chap.  3,  §  2. 


510  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.   1.  — XXXIV.  12.  [LECT. 

Of  what  avail  would  it  have  been  to  confirm  the 
doctrine  of  an  immortality  to  a  people  who  identi- 
fied it  with  the  belief,  that  the  undying  essence,  the 
human  spirit,  was  but  one  of  the  forms  of  bestial  nature  ? 
Of  what  avail  to  communicate  it  to  them  in  any  shape, 
when  the  existing  habits  of  their  minds  would  have 
forcibly  brought  it  back  to  this  base  and  pernicious 
semblance  ?  As  far  as  we  may  reverently  entertain 
such  a  question,  does  it  not  seem  reasonable  to  say, 
that  it  was  more  fit  for  God,  and  more  consistent 
with  what  we  know,  in  other  respects,  of  his  method 
of  educating  this  people,  to  reserve  this  great  doctrine 
from  their  consideration  as  part  of  his  disclosures  to 
them,  till  other  generations  should  arise,  which,  educated 
far  beyond  the  reach  of  the  brutalizing  follies  of  Egypt, 
and  made  capable  of  some  better  conceptions  of  the 
spiritual  world,  and  of  man's  place  in  it,  by  what  their 
Law  taught  them  of  the  undivided  sovereignty  and 
excellent  perfections  of  its  head,  should  not  put  out 
again  in  deep  darkness  the  light  meant  to  enlighten 
the  world? 

But,  was  it  intended,  —  I  shall  be  asked,  —  that  this 
great  doctrine,  without  which,  religion,  as  a  practical 
thing,  can  scarcely  be  said  to  exist,  should  be  still 
withheld  for  fifteen  centuries  ?  Did  God  intend  that 
the  preparation  for  its  disclosure  should  occupy  so  long 
a  time'?  Not  unconscious  of  the  caution  with  which 
such  ground  requires  to  be  trodden,  I  reply ;  that  I 
know  nothing  of  intentions  of  God  in  such  matters,  ir- 
respective of  the  condition  and  the  acts  of  men.  Chris- 
tianity revealed  a  future  life,  in  "  the  fulness  of  time," 
—  when  it  was  most  suitable  that  it  should  be  revealed. 
Had  the  suitable  time  come  earlier,  the  revelation  would 
have  been  earlier  made.  ^,1  find  no  reason  to  doubt  that 
God  gave  Judaism  to  a  portion  of  m^  under  similar 

$■   '  .  * 


XX.]  DEUTERONOMY  XXVII.  1.  — XXXIV.  12.  611 

conditions  to  those  under  which  he  gave  Christianity ; 
and  that  one  of  those  conditions  was,  that  the  better  or 
the  worse  should  be  their  use  of  the  gift,  the  sooner  or 
the  later,  and  to  the  greater  or  the  less  extent,  should 
be  their  enjoyment  of  the  benefits  it  promised.  Chris- 
tianity was  in  abeyance  during  the  dark  ages,  not  by 
God's  irrespective  decree,  but  by  man's  self-destructive 
perversity.  Judaism  did  not  speedily  educate  the  peo- 
ple, and  through  them  prepare  the  world,  for  a  revela- 
tion of  more  truth.  It  did  not  presently  fulfil  its  office, 
because  they  whom  it  should  have  trained  were  wanting 
to  their  duty.  And  accordingly,  the  incomplete  work 
of  Moses,  —  the  proper  foundation  for  higher  truth,  — 
remained  incomplete  through  many  ages.  The  Prophet, 
like  unto  himself,  whom  he  predicted,  delayed  to  come, 
because  they  whom  he  was  to  teach  delayed  to  prepare 
themselves  for  his  instructions.  We  have  repeated  and 
emphatic  declarations  of  God  through  Moses,  that,  in 
one  important  respect,  his  dealings  with  the  Jewish 
nation  should  take  a  character  from  their  deserts.  If 
they  should  prove  obedient,  their  state  would  be  pros- 
perous ;  if  rebellious,  it  would  be  visited  with  all  sorts 
of  calamity.  On  the  same  familiar  principle  of  the  ap- 
plication of  divine  deahngs  to  human  conduct,  I  find  no 
reason  withholding  me  from  the  belief,  that,  if  the  Jews 
had  better  used  their  first  privileges,  they  would  sooner 
have  been  blessed  with  more ;  —  that,  if  the  disciphne 
of  Moses  had  raised  them,  as,  rightly  applied,  it  was 
capable  of  doing,  on  the  scale  of  a  rehgious  civilization, 
life  and  immortahty  might  have  been  brought  to  light 
ages  earlier  in  the  Gospel. 


END  OF  VOLUJBE  FIRST. 


CAMBHIDOE: 
•  FOLSOM,  WELLS,  AND  THURBTON, 

PEIHTEBg   TO    THE    DMVIBSITT. 


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